FIGURES FROM AMERICAN HISTORY 



JEFFERSON DAVIS 

BY 

ARMISTEAD C. GORDON 



FIGURES FROM AMERICAN HISTORY 
Each 12mo. $1.50 net 

Now Ready 

THOMAS JEFFERSON 
By David Seville Muzzey 

JEFFERSON DAVIS 

By Armistead C. Gordon 

Published Later 
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the list including WASHINGTON, LINCOLN, 
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CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, PUBLISHERS 



FIGURES FROM AMERICAN HISTORY 



JEFFERSON DAVIS 



BY 
ARMISTEAD C. GORDON 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1918 



Copyright, 1918, bt 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



Published September, 1918 



St? 20 1918 




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ACKNOWLEDGMENT 

Grateful acknowledgment is made of assistance 
rendered in the preparation of this book by Dr. 
Walter L. Fleming, Professor of History in the Loui- 
siana State University; Dr. Lyon G. Tyler, Presi- 
dent of William and Mary College; Dr. Richard 
Heath Dabney, Professor of History in the Univer- 
sity of Virginia; Dr. Dunbar Rowland, Director of 
the Mississippi State Department of Archives and 
History; Mr. Fairfax Harrison, President of the 
Southern Railway Company; Mr. John D. Van 
Home, of Glyndon, Md.; Mr. John S. Patton, Li- 
brarian of the University of Virginia; Mr. Earl G. 
Swem, Assistant Librarian of the Virginia State Li- 
brary; Hon. D. Lawrence Groner, of Norfolk, Va.; 
Mr. Joseph P. Brady, Clerk of the U. S. District 
Court for the Southern District of Virginia; Dr. 
Thomas Walker Page, Professor of Economics in the 
University of Virginia; Colonel W. Gordon McCabe, 
President of the Virginia Historical Society; Mr. 
Alexander F. Robertson, of Staunton, Va. ; Dr. W. 
G. Stanard, Secretary of the Virginia Historical So- 
ciety; General Julian S. Carr, of Durham, N. C; 
Mr. Lucien Lamar Knight, of Atlanta, Ga. ; the late 
Dr. Charles W. Kent, Professor of Enghsh in the Uni- 



vi ACKNOWLEDGMENT 

versity of Virginia; Mr. H. F. Norris, of Staunton, 
Va.; Mr. Robert M. HugheS; Rector of William and 
Mary College; and the officials of the United States 
Military Academy, West Point, N. Y. 

Especial thanks are due to Dr. Tyler, who read 
the manuscript and made a number of valuable 
suggestions. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAQB 

I. Ancestry and Early Years 1 

II. West Point and the Army 12 

III. Marriage and Life at Briarfield ... 29 

IV. Politics in State and Nation 40 

V. In the House of Representatives ... 51 

VI. Monterey and Buena Vista 58 

VII. The "Great Controversies" 66 

VIII. Four Years in the Cabinet 83 

IX. Slavery in the Territories 91 

X. The Gates of War 108 

XL Fort Sumter 126 

XII. War Measures 143 

XIII. Confederate Diplomacy and the Cotton 

Famine . . . : 157 

XIV. Sea-Power and the Cruisers 171 

XV. Economic and Military Conditions . . . 182 

XVI. The First Years of War 193 

vii 



viii CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XVII. Dark Days in War-Time 211 

XVIII. The Sunset of the Confederacy .... 226 

XIX. Departure from Richmond and Capture 238 

XX. Imprisonment and Trial 257 

XXI. Last Years 277 

XXII. Personality and Character 290 

Authorities 318 

Index 325 



JEFFERSON DAVIS 



JEFFERSON DAVIS 

CHAPTER I 
ANCESTRY AND EARLY YEARS 

The ancestry of Jefferson Davis, like that of his 
great democratic prototype and namesake, Thomas 
Jefferson, was Welsh. Of this ancestry he knew 
little, and for it he cared less. Not long before his 
last journey to his home at Davis Bend, he dictated 
to a friend a brief biography of himself, in which 
is indicated his lack of accurate knowledge in re- 
gard to his origin, but which contains enough of 
family tradition to vindicate what has since been 
discovered concerning it. 

"Three brothers,'^ he said, "came to America 
from Wales in the early part of the eighteenth cen- 
tury. They settled at Philadelphia. The youngest 
of the brothers, Evan Davis, removed to Georgia, 
then a colony of Great Britain. He was the grand- 
father of Jefferson Davis. He married a widow, 
whose family name was Emory. By her he had 
one son, Samuel Davis, the father of Jefferson 
Davis.'' 1 

* Memoir, I, p. 3. 
1 



2 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

There are a number of traditions and stories of 
Davis's origin and ancestry; but the true story is 
probably that disclosed by the records of the Welsh 
Tract Baptist Meeting in Pencader Hundred, New 
Castle County, Delaware, which contain an ac- 
count of the origin, settlement, and development of 
a religious congregation of immigrants from Wales, 
of which one Shion Dafydd, as his name appears 
in Welsh upon their pages, was a member. 

Early in the eighteenth century WilHam Penn 
granted to David Evans and WilHam Davis thirty 
thousand acres of land, which, under the condi- 
tions of the grant, were to be divided and conveyed 
to immigrants from South Wales, some of whom 
were already settled in Radnor Township, Chester 
County, Pennsylvania. This grant, still known as 
'^The Welsh Tract," hes partly in Pencader Hun- 
dred, in New Castle County, and partly in Cecil 
County, Maryland. Prominent among the settlers 
who came to take up Penn's grant were those who 
founded "the Baptist Church Meeting near the 
Iron Hill, in Pencader Hundred, in New Castle 
County." 

The meeting-house Records tell the quaint story 
of the emigration of the earliest members out of 
the counties of Pembroke and Caermarthen, in 
South Wales, to Pennsylvania. They were plain 
people, who worked with their hands, as tillers of 
the soil, carpenters, and artisans. John Davis, 



ANCESTRY AND EARLY YEARS 3 

who in Wales had been Shion Dafydd, the immi- 
grant progenitor of Jefferson Davis, and John^s 
brother, David, are both denominated "turners" 
in the deeds conveying the lands which they got 
from WiUiam Penn^s patentees in Pencader Hun- 
dred.^ 

The members of the Welsh Tract Meeting were 
non-conformistS; and were professed believers in 
"baptism, laying on of hands, election, and final 
perseverance in grace." They were earnest propa- 
gandists, and sent out their colonies in various di- 
rections, as Pennyslvania, Maryland, Virginia, and 
the Pedee River section of South Carolina. 

During his life Jefferson Davis came under various 
denominational influences. His father^s family were 
Baptist, and he attended schools which were of 
Catholic, Presbyterian, and Unitarian direction; 
while in his later years he became an Episcopalian. 
But, though a devout and consistent member of 
the church of his final choice, he was a "religious 
cosmopolitan." Caring little for sectarian creed, 
he was as much at home in one place of religious 
assemblage as in another.^ 

Shion Dafydd^s name appears among the signers 
of " A large confession of faith put forth by upwards 
of a hundred congregations, holding believers, bap- 

* Ancestry, p. 27; Mississippi Valley Historical Review^ extra num- 
ber, April, 1917, p. 151. 

2 Fleming, Religious Life, pp. 327, 342. 



4 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

tism, election, and final perseverance/^ which, for 
the benefit of the Welsh Tract Meeting, "was trans- 
lated to Welsh by Abel Morgan, (minister of the 
gospel in Philadelphia), to which was added. An ar- 
ticle relative to Laying-on-of-hands; singing Psalms; 
and Church-covenants." This document was signed 
by the members of the quarterly meeting, February 
4, 1716.1 

There are a number of other Dafydds and Davids 
on the Welsh Tract roster; and the name "John'' 
is written there, with sturdy indifference, Shon, 
Shons, and Shion; while Davis appears in its Eng- 
lish form in the list as well as in the vernacular of 
the Welsh Dafydd. 

Penn's grantee, William Davis, who, with David 
Evans, had received the "Welsh Tract Grant," 
conveyed, on May 21, 1717, four hundred acres to 
John and David Davis. John Davis had a son 
named David, who was older than his brother, Evan 
Davis; but the John and the David of the deed 
were brothers. The latter married Martha Thomas, 
and they were the parents of the famous Presby- 
terian divine and president of Princeton College, 
Samuel Davies.^ A later deed for this tract of four 
hundred acres was executed May 16, 1743, by John 
Davis and Ann, his wife, to David Davies, who is 
described in it as the David Davis of the deed of 
1717. 

* Records, part I, pp. 18, 21. * Records, part I, p. 26. 



ANCESTRY AND EARLY YEARS 5 

It is uncertain when Evan Davis, who was born 
in Philadelphia/ went South, whither a large colony 
had already gone out from "the Tract" in 1735. 
This colony settled at a place which they called 
"Welsh Neck" on the Pedee River, in South Caro- 
lina. The church at Welsh Neck was later eclipsed 
in religious fame by "Kioka Meeting House" in 
Georgia, near the Savannah River, which was at- 
tended by members from both South Carolina and 
Georgia; and thither Evan Davis moved. He had 
married, probably at Welsh Neck, "the widow Wil- 
liams," whose maiden name was Emory, and who 
is said to have "illustrated the power and the worth 
of woman." 

Of this marriage was born in 1756 Samuel Davis, 
the father of Jefferson Davis. He is supposed to 
have been named in honor of his kinsman, the great 
preacher, who had then become distinguished both 
in America and Europe. 

Evan Davis's wife survived him, and managed 
to give her son Samuel an education in "the three 
R's."2 When he was about twenty years old, his 
mother sent him with supplies to his two half- 
brothers, David and Isaac Williams, who were at 
that time in the Continental army. Samuel de- 
termined also to enHst, and joined them, remain- 
ing in the war until its close. "After several years 

* Genealogy f pp. 12, 50. 

' Memoir, I, p. 4; Genealogy, pp. 50, 51. 



6 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

of soldiering/' writes his son Jefferson, "he had 
gained sufficient experience and confidence to raise 
a company of infantry in Georgia. He went with 
them to join the Revolutionary patriots then be- 
sieged at Savannah." 

Captain Samuel Davis appears to have taken 
his company thence into South Carolina. That 
his services were recognized and highly esteemed 
by that State is evinced by its grant to him of a 
thousand acres of land. 

During the Revolutionary War Samuel Davis's 
mother died; and, upon his return home, he found 
the place where she had lived in an uninhabitable 
condition. He moved away and settled near Au- 
gusta, where he resided for several years. "His 
early education," says his son, "had qualified him 
for the position of county clerk, and the people 
who had known him from boyhood gave him that 
office." 1 

In 1796 he went from Georgia to southwestern 
Kentucky, and engaged in tobacco-planting and 
in horse-raising in Christian County, in "what 
was known as the Green River country." Here, 
in a small farmhouse of one story, was born, on the 
3d of June, 1808, Jefferson, the youngest of the 
children of Samuel Davis and his wife, Jane Cook. 

The part of Christian County where Samuel 
Davis resided is now in Todd County. Here he 

^Memoir, I, pp. 3, 4; Dodd, Life, p. 16. 



ANCESTRY AND EARLY YEARS 7 

continued to live until about 1809, when he again 
moved to a place in Bayou Teche Parish, Louisiana. 
But the climate of his new home was not suited 
to the health of his household; and he departed 
from Bayou Teche, and finally established himself 
on a farm a mile east of Woodville, in Wilkinson 
County, Mississippi, where he died July 4, 1824. 

Samuel Davis is described by his son as "nat- 
urally a grave and stoical character, and of such 
sound judgment that his opinions were a law to 
his children, and quoted by them long after he had 
gone to his final rest, and when they were growing 
old." 

His "sound judgment," however, does not ap- 
pear to have helped Samuel Davis to accumulate 
the material things of life; or else his roving dis- 
position, acquired, perhaps, during the military 
service of his younger years, hindered him. In the 
year prior to his death he visited Philadelphia. 
While on this journey he wrote to his son Jefferson, 
then at Transylvania University, in Kentucky, a 
letter in which he expresses the fear that "all is 
lost here by lapse of time," and exhorts the boy 
to "remember the short lessons of instruction of- 
fered you before our parting. Use every possible 
means to acquire useful knowledge, as knowledge 
is power, the want of which has brought mischief 
and misery on your father in old age." ^ 

* Genealogy, pp. 13, 14. 



8 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

Of his mother Jefferson Davis writes that Samuel 
Davis had first met her during his miHtary service 
in South CaroHna, and that "after the war they 
were married. Her maiden name was Jane Cook. 
She was of Scotch-Irish descent, and was noted 
for her beauty and sprightHness of mind.''^ 

Samuel and Jane Davis had ten children, five 
sons and five daughters, "and all of them arrived 
at maturity except one daughter.'' 

Three of the sons were soldiers in the War of 
1812.2 jn Wilkinson County young Jefferson at- 
tended a country log-cabin school, in the vicinity ^ 
of his father's house, until he was seven years of 
age. The boy was then sent on horseback, with a 
party of his father's friends', through the Choctaw 
and Chickasaw country to Kentucky, and placed 
in a Dominican school known as St. Thomas. 

He remained at St. Thomas for two years. This 
rehgious association was wealthy, and owned "pro- 
ductive fields, slaves, flour-mills, flocks and herds." 
The individuals composing it possessed nothing, 
and were vowed to poverty and self-denial. A large 
majority of the boys in the school were Roman 
CathoHcs; and, after a time, Davis found himself 
"the only Protestant boy remaining, and also the 
smallest boy." The priests were very kind to him, 
and one of them, Father Wallace, who afterward 

' Memoir, I, p. 4. 
* Memoir, I, p. 6. 



ANCESTRY AND EARLY YEARS 9 

became the bishop of Nashville, treated him "with 
the fondness of a near relative/' 

His kindly recollections of his stay at St. Thomas 
lasted through life, and this, together with some 
later friendships which he formed, caused him al- 
ways greatly to admire the Roman Catholics. In 
1863 he was criticised by extreme Protestants in 
the South, and ridiculed by many people in the 
North, because he wrote to the Pope expressing 
his appreciation of the letter which the Romish 
potentate had written to the bishops of New York 
and New Orleans in relation to the war. The Pon- 
tiff's repl}^ was a courteous one; and later, when 
Davis was in prison at Fortress Monroe, Pius IX 
sent him a portrait of himself, with the inscription: 
"Come unto me, all ye who are weary and heavy 
laden, and I will give you rest." 

Those who were critical saw in this exchange 
of letters in 1863 an effort on the part of the Con- 
federate President to gain CathoHc indorsement for 
his cause; but the Pope's later action showed a 
sympathy which was not of the world.^ 

After his return home from St. Thomas he was 
sent by his father to a school called "Jefferson Col- 
lege," in Adams County, Mississippi. His stay 
here was brief, and from his tenth to his thirteenth 
year he went to the academy of Wilkinson County, 
whose master was a scholarly Bostonian, John A. 

^ Fleming, Religious Life, p. 333. 



10 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

Shaw. Davis says that Shaw taught him more, 
in his time at the academy, than he ever learned 
from any one else anywhere. 

From the county academy, in 1821, he entered 
Transylvania University, at Lexington, Kentucky. 
His associations had been with boys older than 
himself, and he was disappointed to discover that 
the freshmen of Transylvania were much younger 
than he was, and was disturbed by being put in 
classes with the smaller boys. He procured private 
coaching at the hands of the professor in mathe- 
matics, so as to enable him to pass examinations 
for the sophomore class and thus to get rid of his 
juvenile associates. 

At Transylvania, he states, he "completed'^ his 
studies in '^ Greek, and Latin, and learned a little 
of algebra, geometry, trigonometry, surveying, pro- 
fane and sacred history, and natural philosophy." ^ 

In spite of his efforts at making up deficiencies, 
he did not become a senior until the end of his third 
session; and there are no records of the school left 
to show his class standing. The later testimony of 
members of his class is that he was a good student. 
One says of him, ^^He was considered by the faculty 
and by his fellow-students as the first scholar, ahead 
of all his classes, and the bravest and handsomest 
of all the college boys"; and another, that he was 
'^ always prepared with his lessons," and ''very 

1 Memoir, I, pp. 20, 27. 



ANCESTRY AND EARLY YEARS 11 

respectful and polite to the president and profes- 
sors/' ^ 

Samuel Davis died in the last year of his son's 
stay at Lexington. He had come home a disap- 
pointed man from the vain search for an illusive 
estate in Philadelphia, or at the "Welsh Tract." 
He was sixty-eight years old at the time of his death, 
and, though his youngest son had seen little of him, 
and that little had been marked by stern treatment 
of the boy by the man, Jefferson Davis's sense of 
filial respect compelled him to an ever-unfailing 
affection throughout life for his father's memory. 

1 Memoir, I, pp. 27, 29; Dodd, Life, pp. 20, 21. 



CHAPTER II 
WEST POINT AND THE ARMY 

The boy had been sent away from home when very 
young; and to a place that was distant^ without 
his mother's knowledge or consent; and while his 
filial reverence for his father was undeviating, the 
recollection of his mother was a gentler and kindlier 
one. '^Neither then^ nor in the many years of my 
life; have I ceased to cherish a tender memory of 
the loving care of that mother, in whom there was 
so much for me to admire, and nothing to remem- 
ber save good/' is his tribute to her in his latest 
years.^ 

In the last year of his school life at Transylvania 
his brother Joseph Emory Davis, who was the oldest 
of Samuel Davis's ten children, and his youngest 
brother's senior by more than twenty-four years, 
obtained for him, through Congressman Chris- 
topher Rankin, of Natchez, then the sole repre- 
sentative from the undeveloped State of Mississippi, 
an appointment to a cadetship at West Point.^ 

* Memoir, I, p. 15. 

^Biographical Congressional Directory, 1774-1911, pp. 105, 944; 
So. Hist. Soc. Papers, xxvi, pp. 14-85. 

12 



WEST POINT. AND THE ARMY 13 

He was appointed by John C. Calhoun, secretary 
of war under Monroe. The appointment was dated 
March 11, 1824, but Davis did not learn of it until 
late the next summer, after he had completed the 
final examinations of the junior class at Transyl- 
vania University.^ 

The pupils of the academy, at the time of Davis^s 
appointment, nimibered between two and three 
hundred. The school was modelled on the Ecole 
Poly technique J and its superintendent was Sylvanus 
Thayer, who made its first reputation.^ 

In mathematics, in which he felt himself espe- 
cially deficient at Transylvania, his teachers were 
Charles Davies, D. H. Mahan, and E. C. Ross. 

Of these, he was especially fond of Mahan, who 
had graduated from the academy at the head of 
his class, and had later studied at the Military 
School of Application for Engineers and Artillerists 
at Metz. There was little difference in the ages 
of instructor and pupil, and a certain similarity of 
tastes drew them together. For quite a time after 
his graduation Davis kept up a correspondence 
with Mahan, who became distinguished, but less 
so than his son. Admiral A. T. Mahan, author of 
the books on sea power.^ 

The MiHtary Academy of to-day is in all its 
physical aspects different from what it was when 

1 Davis at West Point, p. 248. » Ihid., p. 247. 

' Ihid., pp. 252, 253, 



14 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

Davis was a cadet there. The woods came down 
almost to the academy grounds, and ruins of old 
Revolutionary forts and soldiers^ huts and rehcs 
of graves of soldiers who had fallen in the time of 
the revolt of the colonies were still visible among 
the rocky hills. There were four barracks build- 
ings, a mess-hall, and the academy; and about the 
place were scattered the cottages of the instructors 
and officials. 

The cadets occupied the barracks by companies, 
and not by classes; and often members of different 
classes roomed together. Davis for two years 
roomed in No. 19 South Barracks, with two other 
cadets, in an apartment which was eleven feet 
square. Only two of his roommates can now be 
identified, A. G. W. Davis of Kentucky and Wal- 
ter B. Guion of Mississippi.^ "For furniture, there 
were one small table, three chairs, and shelves for 
books at the side of an open fire-place. All this 
furniture was supplied by the cadets themselves. 
Over the fire-place was a rack for three muskets 
and accoutrements. At night three narrow mat- 
tresses were spread upon the floor. Water, for 
drinking and bathing, the cadets brought from the 
spring, and there were no bath-tubs. The fire was 
fed by wood from huge wood-boxes kept in the halls. 
South Barracks was considered very cold in winter, 
and often the cadets in No. 19 sat at study wrapped 

1 Davis at West Point, p. 250. 



WEST POINT AND THE ARMY 15 

in their blankets, feet upon fender. Fire was kin- 
dled in the morning from a tinder-box, and it is a 
matter of record that this tinder-box was often not 
to be found when most needed."^ 

In French he did better than in mathematics. 
His teacher in this language was Claudius Berard, 
a Frenchman of Bordeaux, who was a scholar with 
no military tastes. 

The object of Berard's instruction was to impart 
to his pupils such a knowledge of his mother tongue 
as would enable them to possess a reading capacity 
for the French texts used in the several depart- 
ments. At the conclusion of the subject, in June, 
1826, Davis stood fairly well in his class of forty- 
nine.^ 

He learned enough French from Berard to use 
the texts in that language. "He could understand 
the French dialect spoken in the Northwest, '' writes 
Doctor Fleming, "and when in prison, after the 
Civil War, he managed to converse in French with 
his fellow-prisoner Clay, much to the annoyance 
of Miles, who did not understand the language. 
But when he visited France, in the 'seventies, a 
French newspaper writer declared, 'he stumbles 
much in our language.' "^ 

Jared Mansfield was his teacher in natural phi- 



1 Davis at West Point, pp. 250, 251. 
^Ibid., p. 253; Appleton's Cyc, I, p. 243. 
3 Davis at West Point, p. 254. 



16 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

losophy, a subject which is no longer described by 
this generic term. It then embraced mechanics, 
physics, astronomy, electricity, and optics. His 
stand in "natural philosophy" was mediocre; yet 
some of the subjects greatly interested him. 

The third principal subject, following mathe- 
matics and natural philosophy, was engineering. 
David B. Douglas taught this course, assisted by 
Mahan and A. D. Bache. It embraced both the 
civil and miHtary branches. His standing in en- 
gineering was ordinary. 

The highest achievements by him in any course 
were in some of the varied subjects embraced in 
the category prescribed for instruction by the chap- 
lain, who happened to be at this time a versatile 
and scholarly man and an accomplished teacher. 
The regulations required the chaplain not only to 
preach in the chapel on Sundays but to conduct 
the cadets through a course of descriptive, physical, 
and statistical geography, history — which is de- 
scribed as "universal,'^ and "of the United States 
in particular '^ — ^moral philosophy, "the elements 
of natural and political law,'' and grammar. It 
was a heavy task which was imposed on the Rev- 
erend C. P. Mcllvaine, later Episcopal bishop of 
Ohio; but Davis studied under Mcllvaine, in his 
fourth year, grammar, rhetoric, ethics, and consti- 
tutional law, and stood fourteenth in a class of 
thirty-four, with a grade of 146 out of a 200 maxi- 



WEST POINT AND THE ARMY 17 

mum.^ He always regarded his work in Mcllvaine's 
course as his best at West Point. 

The question whether secession was taught at 
the academy of those days is answered in the af- 
firmative by the story of a text-book. Kent^s Com- 
mentaries, then recently published, was used in the 
chaplain^s course of "constitutional law''; but 
with it was also used A View of the Constitution of 
the United States, by William Rawle, first published 
in 1825, at Philadelphia. Mcllvaine taught Davis's 
class from Rawle's book that "if a faction should \ 
attempt to subvert the Government of a State for ' 
the purpose of destroying its republican form, the 
national power of the Union could be called forth 
to subdue it. Yet it is not to be understood that 
its interposition would be justifiable if a State should 
determine to retire from the Union." ^ "It depends 
on the State itself whether it will continue a member 
of the Union. To deny this right would be incon- 
sistent with the principle on which all our political 
systems are founded, which is that the people have 
in all cases the right to determine how they shall ^ 
be governed." '^The States may then wholly with- 
draw from the Union." " If a majority of the people 
of a State deliberately and peacefully resolve to 
relinquish the republican form of government, they 
cease to be members of the Union." "The seces- 
sion of a State from the Union depends on the will 

1 Davis at West Point, p. 256. 2 Rawle, p. 289. 



18 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

of the people of such State/' "This right must 
be considered an ingredient in the original compo- 
sition of the general government, and the doctrine 
heretofore presented in regard to the indefeasible 
nature of personal allegiance is so far qualified in 
respect to allegiance to the United States."^ 

From the beginning the question had assumed 
serious shape; and the "irrepressible conflict," a 
term for which Lincoln said that neither he nor 
Seward was responsible, but that it originated with 
Roger A. Pryor and the Richmond Enquirer j arose 
with the birth of the Constitution itself.^ The con- 
servative Madison said, in the convention, in pre- 
senting his objections to the principle of State equal- 
ity : " The perpetuity it would give to the Northern 
against the Southern scale was a serious considera- 
tion. It seemed now to be pretty well understood 
that the real difference of interest lay, not between 
the large and small, but between the Northern 
and Southern States. The institution of slavery, 
and its consequences, formed the line of discrimina- 
tion. There were five States on the Southern, eight 
on the Northern side of this line. Should a propor- 

^Rawle, pp. 289, 290, 292, 295; Cotton, p. 252; Davis at West 
Point, pp. 256, 257. Rawle's work, used by Cadet Benjamin S. 
Ewell, later president of William and Mary College, and chief of 
staff of General Joseph E. Johnston, is in the library of the college. 
It bears on the fly-leaf, ** Cadet Benjamin S. Ewell, West Point, 
1832." 

2 Debates of Lincoln and Douglas, p. 309 (speech at Cincinnati, 
September, 1859). 



WEST POINT AND THE ARMY 19 

tional representation take place, it was true, the 
Northern would still outnumber the other; but not 
in the same degree, at this time; and every day 
would tend towards an equilibrium.'^^ 

It has been said that it was the intention of 
Davis's lawyers, when he was under indictment for 
treason, to make use of Rawle's essay when his 
trial should be had; and it is quite probable that 
the young cadet, who was especially interested in 
the subjects taught by Mcllvaine, which included 
constitutional law, gained, from his teaching, those 
views in regard to State sovereignty that character- 
ized his later political career. Though but a junior 
officer in the army, he seems four years after leav- 
ing West Point to have formed a very clear con- 
ception of the rights of the States as then recognized 
by the Strict Constructionists, and illustrated it in 
his attitude toward "Nullification" and Jackson's 
"Force Bill."^ 

The regulations of the United States Military 
Academy of Davis's time make no mention of an 
oath as required from a cadet upon his admission. 
The later academic regulations of 1839 provide 
that the cadet shall subscribe a promise to serve 
in the army for eight years, and to pledge his honor 
as a gentleman that "he will faithfully observe the 
rules and articles of war," and the regulations of 

^ The Lost Principle, pp. 49, 50. 
2 See post, pp. 27, 28. 



20 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

the academy. 1 No ^^oath of allegiance" to the 
United States was required. 

Classmates of Davis said of him that in military 
matters he was looked on as a leader by the cadet 
corpS; and General Crafts J. Wright described him 
as '^distinguished in the corps for his manly bearing 
and his high-toned and lofty character. His figure 
was very soldier-like and rather robust, his springy 
step resembling the tread of an Indian brave on 
the war-path." 2 

" Spending-money was scarce with most of the 
cadets. Davis received $16 per month pay, and 
two rations, equivalent to $28 per month. Out of 
this he had to pay all expenses. But he was eco- 
nomical, and sent part of his money to his mother 
each month. There were rules against receiving 
spending-money from home, but many cadets man- 
aged to get it, — 'patches for old clothes,' it was 
called. Nearly all were in debt to stores at the 
Point."^ 

His friends and schoolmates included many who 
afterward were distinguished in the Union and Con- 



1 Letters to the writer, 1917, from Headquarters, U. S. Military 
Academy, West Point. Prior to 1861 no oath of "allegiance" was 
required at any time of any one. The only oath taken by United 
States officials was one "to support the Constitution of the United 
States," which in the opinion of Southern statesmen satisfied the 
requirements of the Constitution, whose Tenth Amendment re- 
served all undelegated powers, including that of secession. 

^Blackwood's Magazine, September, 1862; Memoir, I, p. 51. 

' Davis at West Point, pp. 264, 265; Memoir, I, p. 54. 



WEST POINT AND THE ARMY 21 

federate armies. His most intimate companions 
were Albert Sidney Johnston and Leonidas Polk. 
It is said that Polk was the first cadet to kneel in 
chapel, and Davis, Johnston, and others soon fol- 
lowed his example.^ 

Davis, although in later years a devout and con- 
sistent Episcopalian, did not connect himself with 
any religious body until 1863. His second wife 
was an Episcopalian, and it was due to her influence 
that, with a cosmopolitan indifference to doctrine 
and dogma, he allied himself with the denomination 
of her choice. 

Johnston, who like Davis had attended Transyl- 
vania University before going to West Point, was 
two classes ahead of him. But class feeling and 
association were not as strong then as they after- 
ward became, and Davis's friends were chosen by 
him without regard to class affiliation. Johnston's 
son, in his biography of his father, says of their re- 
lations: "Jefferson Davis, who was two classes 
below Johnston in the Academy, formed with him 
a fast friendship, that grew and strengthened, and 
knew neither decay nor end."^ 

His years at the academy were fruitful if not 
studious ones, and were strongly formative of his 
character. The mental and social training which 
he received here did much toward developing the 

^ Religious Life of Davis, p. 328; Metropolitan Magazine, June, 1908. 
"Johnston, Life of A. S. Johnston, p. 14. 



J 



22 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

unyielding disposition that illustrated his career 
as President of the Confederacy. Here he laid the 
foundations of a broad and catholic education, and 
acquired those tastes for mathematical; philosoph- 
ical, and engineering problems which lasted into his 
maturer life. He gained here, too, a habit of wide 
and extensive reading, which resulted in causing 
those who knew him well in later years to regard 
him as one of the best-educated men of his day in 
America.^ 

His interest in the place was strong and abiding, 
and one of his last acts as a United States senator 
was to aid in revising its course of studies. Kindly 
memories of his years at West Point stayed with 
him always, and in his last days, when the hand of 
death lay on him, he dictated some desultory recol- 
lections of the school. 

"I have not told," he said, "what I wish to say 
of my (friends) Sidney Johnston and Polk. I have 
much more to say of them. I shall tell a great deal 
of West Point, and I seem to remember more every 
day."2 

Davis graduated from the MiHtaiy Academy in 
July, 1828, with the usual brevet of second Heu- 
tenant of infantry. From West Point he went, on 
his first furlough, to the home of his brother Joseph 
in Mississippi. In the late autumn of the year he 

^ Davis at West Point, p. 267. 
2 Ibid., p. 267. 



WEST POINT AND THE ARMY 23 

reported for duty at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, 
taking with him from Hurricane, his brother^s place 
at Davis Bend, a young negro slave named James 
Pemberton, who had accompanied liis father on 
his visit to Philadelphia in 1823, as far as Harford 
in Maryland, and of whom Samuel Davis had 
written his son : "I have notify ed you where I have 
left your boy James; he is in the care of a David 
Malsby in the village aforenamed.'^ ^ 

Until he was twenty-eight years old, when he 
left the army, Davis had spent only eleven years of 
his life in the South and Southwest, and they were 
years of his earliest youth. His acquaintance and 
association with the negroes of a typical Black Belt 
section were only casual. James Pemberton, who 
had been given to him by his mother when they 
were both boys, and who now accompanied him 
as a "body-servant" to the armiy-post in Missouri, 
was the first negro slave with whom he came into 
personal relations. Pemberton remained with him 
during his military service on the frontier, from 
1829 to 1835. Much of this time he was stationed 
in free States and in free Territories, but such resi- 
dence occasioned the negro, who was very intel- 
ligent, no discontent with his peculiar situation, 
nor did it ever occur to him to think of changing 
it. His devotion to his master was characteristic 
of the best of the slaves of the period. 

* Genealogy, p. 14. 



24 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

Davis remained at Jefferson Barracks for a short 
time, and then was ordered to Fort Crawford on 
the site now occupied by the city of Prairie du Chien, 
near the junction of the Wisconsin River with the 
Mississippi. 

From the autumn of 1829 until 1831 he was 
stationed at Fort Winnebago, about two miles from 
the junction of the Fox and Winnebago Rivers, 
with an intervening region between it and the fort 
at Chicago which was for the most part imexplored 
by white men, though the Indians occupying it 
were generally friendly. In 1831 he was sent to 
the upper waters of the Yellow River on a lum- 
bering expedition for the works at Fort Crawford. 
Here he established a sawmill and constructed a 
small rough fort; and here also he succeeded in 
winning the confidence and friendship of the local 
Indians.ji At this time he had little or no beard, 
and "his smooth face, fresh color, and gay laugh 
gave the impression of a boy of nineteen.'^ But 
the Indians recognized his soldierly qualities, and 
one of the chiefs adopted him as a "brother." He 
was thenceforth known among them as "Little 
Chief." 

In this year fell what was known for a long time 
thereafter in the Northwest as "the deep snow." 
Through overexertion and exposure to the rigors 
of the winter he became ill with pneumonia. For 
many months he lay prostrated in an isolated coun- 



WEST POINT AND THE ARMY 25 

try; but with indomitable will and energy, he con- 
tinued to direct from his sick-bed the operations 
of his men. He became very feeble and emaciated, 
and the faithful James Pemberton, who was his 
nurse, used to lift him in his arms like a child and 
carry him from his bed to his seat by the window.^ 

His illness left a permanent impression on Davis's 
vitaHty, and was the beginning of the acute attacks 
of facial neuralgia which pursued him through life, 
often making him almost blind for days at a time 
and causing him intense suffering. 

In 1831 he was again at Fort Crawford, where ^ 
Colonel Zachary Taylor had succeeded to the com- 
mand of his regiment, the 1st Infantry. Taylor 
sent him to the lead-mines of Galena, Illinois, to 
deal with the troubles which had developed into 
a local war between the Indians of the vicinity and 
the white adventurers who had swarmed in with 
the hope of taking possession of lands which were 
believed to be rich in mineral treasure. An earlier 
emissary had been detailed on a similar mission, 
which had failed. Davis brought about temporary 
peace between the contending parties by a diplo- 
matic arrangement under which the miners were 
to file records of their claims with him, and sur- 
render possession of the lands to the Indians until 
the government should determine the respective 
rights of the contending parties. 

1 Memoir, I, p. 81. 



26 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

The subsequent ratification of a treaty concern- 
ing the lands temporarily appeased the local In- 
dians; but it did not satisfy Black Hawk, the chief 
of the Sac and Fox tribes, who resented the intrusion 
of the white men. One of its provisions, which had 
been agreed to by a number of minor chieftains, 
made the lead-mines the property of the whites. 

The Indians were evicted, and Black Hawk, re- 
turning in the following spring, crossed the Missis- 
sippi River and engaged in indiscriminate warfare 
on the white settlers. During the summer the In- 
dians were driven back to the Wisconsin, and later 
were routed at the battle of Bad Axe. Black Hawk 
and two of his sons were captured, with sixty or 
more other prisoners, and sent down the river to 
Jefferson Barracks under Davis's charge. In his au- 
tobiography the Indian chieftain records his treat- 
ment by the young lieutenant: 

We started to Jefferson Barracks in a steamboat, under 

the charge of a young war-chief [Lieutenant Davis], who 

treated us all with much kindness. He is a good and brave 

young chief, with whose conduct I was much pleased. 

On our way down we called at Galena, and remained a 

short time. The people crowded to the boat to see us, 

but the war-chief would not permit them to enter the 

apartment where we were, knowing from what his own 

feelings would have been, if he had been placed in a similar 

situation, that we did not wish to have a gaping crowd 

around us.^ 

1 Life of Black Hawk, edited by J. B. Patterson (1834), quoted, 
Memoir, I, p. 143; Life of Cass (S. S.), p. 141. 



WEST POINT AND THE ARMY 27 

After the close of the Black Hawk War Davis 
was again sent on a tour of inspection to the Galena 
lead-mines; and in the autumn of 1832 he was or- 
dered to Louisville and Lexington on recruiting 
service. During his stay in Lexington a violent 
epidemic of cholera broke out, but he continued 
at his post until the plague was under control. 

It was at the time of the Black Hawk War that 
the young soldier was first confronted with what 
promised to test his views, then already formed, 
of constitutional State sovereignty. He alluded in 
his speech on the compromise measures of 1850 
to the rumor, when the NulHfication Ordinance 
was adopted by South Carolina, that his regiment 
would probably be sent to Charleston to enforce 
the federal tariff law. "Then," said he, "much 
as I valued my commission, much as I desired to 
remain in the army, and disapproving as much as 
I did the remedy resorted to, that commission would 
have been torn to tatters before it would have been 
used in civil war with the State of South Caro- 
lina." i 

He never had, then or thereafter, any sympathy 
with the political reasoning of the nullifiers who 
proposed to remain in the Union and yet to invali- 
date a law of the Union. Infringement upon the 
rights of a State which was unbearable was ac- 

^ Dodd, Life, p. 38; Cong. Globe, 31st Cong., 1st session, July 
13, 1850; Memoir, I, pp. 89, 90. 



v" 



28 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

cording to his theory of the Constitution to be met 
in the last extremity by the Staters withdrawal from 
the Union. 

Returning from Kentucky to Fort Crawford with 
his recruitS; Davis remained there until 1834, when 
he was ordered to Fort Gibson on the extreme fron- 
tier. Prior to his recruiting detail to Lexington 
and Louisville, he had been selected by Colonel 
Taylor from the 1st Infantry for promotion as 
adjutant to the newly created regiment of Dra- 
goons.^ 

* Memoir, I, p. 149. 



CHAPTER III 
MARRIAGE AND LIFE AT BRIARFIELD 

When Colonel Zachary Taylor succeeded Colonel 
Willoughby Morgan in command of the 1st In- 
fantry at Fort Crawford, in 1832, he brought with 
him to the post his wife and children; and their 
home was the centre of social life. Mrs. Taylor was 
a kindly lady of a domestic disposition, and her 
daughters were interesting and attractive. Anne, 
the eldest, became the wife of Doctor Robert Wood, 
later surgeon-general of the United States army, 
and their son was John Taylor Wood, who was a 
graduate of the Naval Academy, commander of 
the cruiser Tallahassee, and one of the last men to 
leave the Confederate President before his capture 
in 1865. Sarah Knox Taylor, the second daughter, 
was eighteen years old when Davis first met her, 
and was her father^s favorite. Elizabeth, the 
youngest, was then a child; and the son, Richard, 
who thirty years afterward became a distinguished 
Confederate general, is described as being at the 
time ^'a lubberly sort of a boy." 

Sarah Knox, named in honor of Washington's 
secretary of war, became Davis^s first wife. Of their 

29 



30 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

courtship and marriage legend and gossip have 
furnished many contradictory accounts. The pub- 
Hcation of some of these stories, notably that con- 
tained in a biographical sketch of Davis in a 
prominent cyclopaedia of 1888, caused him pain 
and displeasure. In it their marriage was spoken 
of as a "romantic elopement," and he denounced 
the statement as a "baseless scandal." 

Davis fell in love with Sarah Knox Taylor, and 
though most of his leisure time at the fort was spent 
in reading law, he found opportunity to press his 
suit. An engagement of marriage soon ensued, 
subject to Colonel Taylor's approval. But "Old 
Rough and Ready" did not regard the match with 
favor, and refused his consent. When Captain 
Kearney, one of the senior officers of the post, and 
a friend of Davis's, endeavored to persuade Taylor 
to withdraw his opposition, the stern parent an- 
swered : 

I will be damned if another daughter of mine shall 
marry into the army. I know enough of the family life 
of officers. I scarcely know my own children or they me. 
I have no personal objections to Lieutenant Davis.^ 

Taylor never afterward permitted any prejudice 
against Davis to cause him to discriminate against 
him as an officer. He often chose him for important 
service, as when he sent him to settle the troubles 

^Davis^s First Marriage, pp. 23, 25, 29, 30. 



MARRIAGE 31 

at the Galena lead-mineS; and when he put him in 
charge of the detail which accompanied Black Hawk 
to St. Louis; and Davis was selected by him in 1835 
for promotion to the newly organized 2d Regiment 
of Dragoons. 

Before time had healed the wounded feelings to 
which the courtship of the lovers had first given 
rise, and before the marriage took place, Taylor 
ceased his active opposition and yielded an un- 
willing acquiescence. He wrote to his sister, Mrs. 
John Gibson Taylor, during his daughter's visit to 
her aimt in Kentucky a short time prior to the wed- 
ding, that "if Kjiox was still determined to marry 
Lieutenant Davis, he would no longer withhold 
his consent, but wished her to marry at her aunt's 
house.'' ^ 

The wedding took place at Beechland, the resi- 
dence of John Gibson Taylor, near Louisville. 
Davis says of it : 

In 1835 I resigned from the army, and Miss Taylor 
being then in Kentucky with her aunt, — the oldest sister 
of General Taylor, — I went thither, and we were married 
in the presence of General Taylor's two sisters, of his 
oldest brother, his son-in-law, and many other members 
of his family.^ 

After their wedding they visited Joseph Emory 
Davis, at Hurricane, on Davis Bend; and, to start 

1 Davis^s First Marriage, pp. 26, 31. ^ Memoir, I, p. 162, 



32 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

the young people in life, his brother gave Jefferson 
an adjoining tract of land known as Briarfield; and 
sold him fourteen slaves on credit. Here he worked 
at clearing up the place and getting it into shape 
for cultivation until the "fever season'^ of the year 
came round, when he took his young wife, who was 
unacclimated, on a visit to his sister, Mrs. Luther 
Smith, at Locust Grove Plantation, in West Feli- 
ciana Parish, Louisiana. Her stay in the miasmatic 
region of Briarfield, however, had been fatal. They 
both fell ill with malarial fever on arriving at Locust 
Grove, and Mrs. Davis died. 

Her early and tragic death, after a few happy 
months of wedded life, produced a permanent im- 
pression upon the bereaved husband; and for eight 
years afterward he lived in seclusion at Briarfield, 
occupying himself with the cultivation of his fields 
and in the pursuits of reading and study. 

After his wife^s death, weak and prostrated from 
his own illness, he sailed in the autumn of 1835 to 
Havana i*n search of health. 

In the following spring, with his health partially 
restored, he returned to Briarfield, and took up the 
life of a planter and student. For the ensuing eight 
years he came strongly under the influence of his 
brother Joseph, who lived with his family on the 
adjacent plantation. Joseph Davis had prevailed 
on him to enter the army, instead of becoming a 
lawyer, and had obtained an appointment for him 



MARRIAGE 33 

to West Point. He had persuaded him to relinquish 
the iniHtary Hfe and become a planter in 1835; and 
he had given him the Briarfield plantation when 
he was married. Though they had been little thrown 
together, his brother had been Jefferson's monitor 
and best friend. Their life, after the younger man 
went to Davis Bend to live, was one of intimate asso- 
ciation and of daily contact; and the impression of 
the older on the younger was profound and lasting. 

They spent the hours which were not devoted 
to the management of their plantations in the dis- 
cussion of pontics, of government, and of literature. 
Joseph Davis received in his library the best Eng- 
lish and American periodicals of the day; and he 
and his brother Jefferson read the Congressional 
Globe, the National Intelligencer , the Charleston 
Mercury, and the Richmond Enquirer, together 
with the local Mississippi papers. On the shelves 
of the library at Hurricane, where the younger 
brother spent many hours each day, were the classic 
authors of Great Britain; and he founded upon the 
models of the best orators and essayists and his- 
torians of the English language the unusual power 
of expression which characterized his subsequent 
speeches and writings. 

He was deeply interested in his occupation as a 
planter, and pursued it, in all its details, with an 
intelligence and an energy that achieved significant 
results. He got the best work from his slaves by 



34 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

his interest in them and by his kindly treatment 
of them. He investigated and appHed the most 
desirable methods of agriculture, and his labors 
were crowned with abundant success. 

Davis Bend was a peninsula on the Mississippi, 
which included lands of great fertility. In the 
management and control of their plantations the 
Davis brothers were daily many hours in the 
saddle; and in their fields were produced most 
of the aiticles primarily necessary for the support 
and maintenance of the local population. The di- 
rection of his plantation tended strongly to develop 
administrative ability of high order, and " as master 
of such an estate, and associate with his brother on 
a much larger one, Jefferson Davis emerged from 
this period of retirement a tried executive, which, 
added to his scholarly attainments and military 
training, made him an unusual character, one to 
whom people would readily turn for leadership."^ 

Until 1835, when at the age of twenty-six he 
married and went to live at Briarfield, he had had 
no practical knowledge of the conditions of plan- 
tation negro slavery. His childhood had been spent 
in a new country, in which society was crude and 
in a formative state and where slavery was merely 
an incident. James Pemberton was the only slave 
he had owned or whose service he had directed, 
prior to his purchase from his brother Joseph of 

1 Dodd, Life, pp. 52, 53. 



MARRIAGE 35 

those with whom he cleared and planted Briarfield. 
In the eight years at Davis Bend, in which he was 
thrown into intimate daily contact with the slave 
population, and in the less intimate because less 
frequent association of his subsequent career, he 
formed his views of the negroes as a race and de- 
veloped his ideas of slavery as a social and economic 
institution. 

In his opinion, slavery was not only a temporary solu- 
tion of the labor-problem in the newly settled South, 
but it was also a partial solution of what we now call the 
race problem, — the problem of how to make tw^o distinct 
races live together without friction. That the negro race 
was fundamentally inferior to the white was his firm 
conviction. That there was any moral wrong in holding 
slaves, he in company with most of the slave-holders, 
would never admit. By him, as by most men of his class, 
then as now, slavery was considered a benefit to the negro 
and a recognition of that law of nature which subjected 
the weaker to the stronger for the good of both. Slavery 
took idle, unmoral, barbarous blacks and gradually rooted 
out their savage traits, giving to them instead the white 
man's superior civilization, his religion, his language, his 
customs, his industry. The negro was a child-race, and 
slavery was its training school. These convictions shaped 
his attitude toward the individuals of the race. And 
never were there more intimate friendships between whites 
and blacks than between Davis and his servants, as he 
always called his slaves.^ 

1 Davis, the Negroes and the Negro Problem, p. 3. Speech of Davis on 
"Slavery in the Territories," in the Senate, February 13 and 14, 1850. 
Appendix to Congressional Globe, 1st session, 31st Cong., pp. 149 etseq. 



I'i J 

36 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

He and his brother thought alike on most ques- 
tions, and a pohtical maxim of the older brother, 
which Jefferson adopted, was the famihar one of 
laissez-faire. "The less people are governed, the 
more submissive they will be to control," and con- 
sequently the better governed they will be, was a 
theory which Joseph Davis put into successful prac- 
tical execution with the negroes on Davis Bend in 
the early thirties of the nineteenth century, and 
he and Jefferson Davis continued his system of 
slave management uninterruptedly as long as slavery 
existed. 

This system was one in which the master exercised 
the least possible control of the individual slave 
consistent with the latter^s good behavior and the 
proper discharge of his duties, and gave to the slave 
commimity a large measure of authority over the 
individual. It provided the judicial means of de- 
termination, by a regularly constituted court com- 
posed of judge, jury, and sheriff, all of whom were 
blacks on the plantation, of all matters involving a 
breach of discipline or of morals. No negro at Davis 
Bend was ever convicted in this court save by a 
jury of his peers, made up of the "settled'' men. 
An elderly negro judge presided; a black sheriff 
compelled attendance; and black witnesses were 
examined and testified, as in legally constituted 
tribunals. The verdicts of the negro juries were 
usually fair and impartial and gave satisfaction. 



MARRIAGE 37 

Davis always reserved the right to modify or to 
alter the judgment of the court, to suspend sen- 
tence, or to grant pardon; but he was seldom re- 
quired to interfere with the punishment meted out 
to offenders. The negroes, who were strongly amen- 
able to formalities and ceremonies, took great pride 
in the administration of their court; and if there 
was any defect in the operation of the system it 
lay in the occasional inclination of the juries to 
deal severely with crime.^ 

As long as he lived James Pemberton, in whose 
judgment and fideHty Davis reposed lasting con- 
fidence, was "head man" over the negroes at Briar- 
field, and exercised his sway with ability and dis- 
cretion in co-operation with the estabHshed negro 
tribunal. After his death, in 1852, Davis felt it 
necessary to employ white overseers, on account of 
his continued absence from home; but they were 
not allowed, as elsewhere, to inflict corporal punish- 
ment. Their prerogative of compelling obedience 
and order did not go beyond reporting derelictions 
and offenses on the part of the slaves to the plan- 
tation court; and this method of managing the 
negroes proved so objectionable to the white over- 
seers that at least one of them left on account of 
it. "The Davis system, which was practised imtil 
1862, had vitality enough to survive for a while 

1 Davis, the Negroes and the Negro Problem, pp. 6, 7; Memoir, I, 
p. 174. 



38 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

after the Federals had occupied the plantations, 
and a year later a Northern officer, who saw what 
remained of the self-governing community, and 
knowing nothing of its origin, took it for a new de- 
velopment and an evidence of how one year of free- 
dom would elevate the blacks."^ 

The efforts of the brothers to inculcate in the 
negroes at Hurricane and Briarfield habits of thrift, 
self-reliance, and self-government, proceeded in yet 
other directions. Any negro who by skilled labor 
and dihgence as a carpenter or blacksmith, or by 
other manual art, was able to make money for him- 
self, was permitted to do so, paying to his master 
the ordinary wages of an unskilled laborer; and 
some of the slaves set up business for themselves. 

Religious training was afforded them, and the 
brothers paid the salary of a white Methodist 
itinerant preacher, who was sent out by his church 
to do missionary work among the slaves on the 
plantations. Doctor Fleming, in his account of 
the life of the negroes at Hurricane and Briarfield, 
quotes the statement by Davis of his conviction 
that in religious work for the negroes the South 
had "been a greater practical missionary than all 
the society missionaries in the world.' ^^ 

When he left Briarfield in 1861, upon notification 



^ Davis, the Negroes and the Negro Prohlem, p. 7, citing John Eaton, 
Grant, Lincoln, and the Freedmen, p. 165. 

2 Jbid,^ pp. 8, 9. . • , 



MARRIAGE 39 

of his election to the presidency of the Confederate 
States, he assembled his "servants'' and made them 
a farewell talk. He saw little of them again, save 
of the few who greeted him on the occasion of his 
visit to New Orleans after his release from prison, 
and again when he went to Davis Bend imme- 
diately preceding his death; though many of them 
clung to the place after the siege of Vicksburg. 
Others, who had gone away, returned, and for a 
time it was made a "Freedman's Home" for them 
and for many others who were brought there, and 
they were put in possession of the land by the fed- 
eral authorities. 

When he died in New Orleans, in 1889, those of 
his former slaves and their children who were still 
living on Davis Bend sent to his widow a message 
of sympathy and affection: 

We, the old servants and tenants of our beloved master. 
Honorable Jefferson Davis, have cause to mingle our 
tears over his death, who was always so kind and thought- 
ful of our peace and happiness. We extend to you our 
humble sympathy. 

Respectfully, 
Your old Tenants and Servants.* 

* Davis, the Negroes and the Negro Problem, p. 23. 



CHAPTER IV 
POLITICS IN STATE AND NATION 

Between the years 1830 and 1840 the population 
of Mississippi had increased by three hundred thou- 
sand, and the southward movement of slavery, 
which had begun in the previous century from New 
England, now proceeded from Virginia in the di- 
rection of the new and rich territory lying along the 
Mississippi Eiver and the Gulf of Mexico.^ An 
active immigration of whites from many sections 
of the country swarmed in; and Davis states, in his 
sketch of his own life, that in his boyhood Missis- 
sippi was composed of about equal parts of im- 
migrants from the States lying along the seaboard 
and from the more recently settled communities 
of the West. 

With the development of the Mississippi coun- 
try, the influx of slave owners bringing with them 
their slaves, the increase in the values both of 
slaves and of lands, and the busy movement of 
united energy and opportunity, it was inevitable 
that the spirit of speculation should take possession 
of the people. There was an inflation of values, a 

1 Cotton, pp. 149 ff- 
40 



POLITICS IN STATE AND NATION 41 

reckless issue of obligations public and private; and 
a consequent climax of debt and repudiation. 

Two issues of bonds, known respectively as 
"Union Bank bonds" and "Planters' Bank bonds/' 
behind which were the faith and credit of the State, 
were repudiated by the legislature of Mississippi. 
In 1830 the State had chartered the Planters' Bank, 
and had become its principal stockholder; and in 
1833 the legislature authorized the sale of a million 
and a half of its bonds, which were sold in New York 
at a premium of thirteen per cent. The sale indi- 
cated an unreal prosperity and was based on a 
dangerous expansion of credit. In 1837 the tide of 
speculation had run so high that the general de- 
mand for more money was met by the establish- 
ment of other banks, with capital derived from the 
sale of bonds.^ 

The movement against the Union Bank bonds 
took form in 1841, when the governor of the State 
advocated their repudiation in a message to the 
legislature. The legislature of that session refused 
to concur in the governor's recommendation; but 
that of 1842 was more pliable, and the Repudiation 
Act was passed. Eleven years later the Planters' 
Bank bonds were repudiated.^ 

For a period of twenty years after 1840, the payment 
or repudiation of the public debt was an important polit- 

» State Finances of Miss., S. B. AT., V, p. 524. 

' Van Home, Davis and Repudiation in Miss., p. 8. 



42 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

ical issue. The management of the State banks had been 
corrupt, and politicians inflamed the minds of the people 
against banks and bondholders for selfish purposes. As 
the result of such agitation, the State repudiated seven 
million dollars of just debts.^ 

The Democratic party of Mississippi, to which 
Davis belonged, had made itself responsible for the 
policy of repudiation in the year preceding that in 
which he first entered the political arena as a 
candidate for the legislature. It had been in con- 
trol of the machinery of government which had 
enacted the statute of 1842, repudiating the Union 
Bank bonds. The Whig party believed the time 
to be a favorable one for electing a legislature, and 
for reversing the policy of the repudiationists. There 
were two Whig candidates for the State house of 
representatives in the Whig county of Warren. 
Davis was opposed to the repudiation policy of 
his^own party, and the local Democrats thought 
that his nomination would draw votes from their 
divided opponents and secure the election of a 
Democrat. The champion of the Whigs in the State 
was Sergeant S. Prentiss, who was earnestly op- 
posed to the Democratic policies. Davis's attitude 
on the question of the bonds was that of his Whig 
neighbors. He held that the Union Bank bonds, 
which were the subject of dispute, were obligations 
issued by the State, whose validity ought to be 

^S. B. N., V, pp. 524, 525. 



POLITICS IN STATE AND NATION 43 

determined by the adjudication of the courts, and 
that there was no power in the legislature to re- 
pudiate them. In view of the then-existing con- 
stitution of the State judiciary, which was of a mind 
to uphold their validity, this was equivalent to 
insisting that they should be paid. He met Prentiss 
in a joint debate, from which they agreed to elim- 
inate the bond question as one on which they 
were in essential accord, and to confine their dis- 
cussion to other matters of State and national polit- 
ical difference. 

"The result of the election,'^ he said at a later 
time, "as anticipated, was my defeat. As this was 
the only occasion on which I was ever a candidate 
for the legislature in Mississippi, it may be seen 
how utterly unfounded was the allegation that at- 
tributed to me any part in the legislative enactment 
known as the 'Act of Repudiation.' " ^ 

In subsequent years attacks were made on him 
by personal and pohtical enemies as having been 
an advocate of the repudiation measures of this 
period. He felt, and at times expressed especial 
indignation that General Winfield Scott should 
have published in his autobiography the assertion 
that the Mississippi bonds had been "repudiated 
mainly by Mr. Jefferson Davis,'' ^ and spoke in 



1 Walthall, Davis, pp. 10, 11. 

* Ibid., p. 12; Van Home, Davis and Repudiation in Miss., p. 9, 
note 7. 



44 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

terms of even stronger condemnation of the efforts 
of Robert J. Walker, while the financial agent of 
the United States Government in England during 
the war, to fasten upon him the stigma of having 
been a repudiator. Walker^s attack took shape in 
a volume published in London in 1863, which public 
men in the Confederacy regarded as intended to 
discredit Davis in connection with Walker^s efforts 
to prevent a foreign loan to the Confederate States. 
''By reason of intimate connection in the past with 
politics in Mississippi," writes Mr. Van Home, 
"Mr. Walker should have been familiar with the 
movement which culminated in the legislature's 
resolution of 1842, but his letters pubHshed in Lon- 
don failed to show any participation by Mr. Davis 
in that movement.^' ^ He never at any time, either 
before or after the legislative canvass of 1843, held 
any civil office, legislative, executive, or judicial, 
under the State government; and the repudiators 
in his own party urged actively but ineffectually 
his well-known sympathy with the payment of the 
debt against his subsequent election to Congress 
in 1845. 

Prior to 1843 he had evinced no disposition to 
engage in active politics, but he had attracted at- 
tention by his dignified and courageous course in 

^Van Home, Davis and Repudiation in Miss., pp. 11, 12; Walt- 
hall, Davis, p. 12; Dodd, Life, p. 64; Trent, Southern Statesmen 
of the Old Regime, p. 275; Pollard, Life, p. 22; Memoir, I, p. 185, 
and note. 



POLITICS IN STATE AND NATION 45 

the brief canvass which he made for the legislature; 
and in the following year he was nominated as an 
elector on the Polk and Dallas presidential ticket, 
and made an aggressive campaign in its behalf 
throughout the State. His electoral ticket was 
chosen in the State, and Democracy was successful 
in the Union; and recognition and popularity fol- 
lowed his first State-wide campaigning. His repu- 
tation as a public speaker gave him position in his 
party, and in 1845 he was nominated by the Democ- 
racy of Mississippi for representative-at-large in 
the United States Congress. On the day following 
his nomination he published a pamphlet announcing 
his continued and unalterable opposition to the 
Democratic attitude toward the repudiation of the 
State debt, which was the one live local issue in the 
campaign. His daughter, Mrs. Hayes, states that 
her father was moved to this speedy and emphatic 
announcement of his position on the debt question, 
''because the chairman of the nominating body 
was a repudiator.'^ ^ 

The Democratic organization, however, gave him 
\oj3i\ support; and he was elected and took his seat 
in the House of Representatives the following De- 
cember. 

The time of his entrance into national politics 
was one of great restlessness and party passion. 

1 Letter in N. Y. World, Jan. 3, 1905; Memoir, I, pp. 205, 206; 
Dodd, Life, pp. 67, 68. 



46 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

The tide of agitation over the question of slavery, 
though not yet at its flood, was already flowing 
free; and the annexation of Texas was the subject 
of strenuous controversy, while the '^Oregon ques- 
tion'^ was part and parcel of the same agitation. 
The Democratic party in the campaign of 1845 
was committed to the tariff of 1842, to the annexa- 
tion of Texas, and to the measure of "the whole 
of Oregon, or none, with or without war with Eng- 
land/' 

The origins of the political controversies which 
culminated in a conflict of arms between the sec- 
tions in 1861 were in existence even in the colonial 
era. They appeared in the debates of the State 
assemblies over the adoption of the Federal Con- 
stitution. But slavery, which later emerged from 
the background of its constitutional recognition, 
and became both centre and circumference of the 
"great controversies,'' was not one of the earlier 
and more serious subjects of difference which arose 
out of constitutional construction and interpreta- 
tion. From the beginning of the government the 
basic causes of contention lay in matters of economic 
development and of sectional political power. These 
were illustrated in the questions of the control by 
Spain of the Mississippi River, the location of the 
federal capital, the assumption of the State debts, 
the negotiations with France and England regard- 
ing trade, the alien and sedition laws, the United 



POLITICS IN STATE AND NATION 47 

States Bank; and by the embargo and non-inter- 
course laws favored by Southern administrations 
to countervail the restrictions of England and her 
violation of our rights on the high seas. Later eco- 
nomic division was emphasized by the tariff and by 
nullification in South Carolina, and by the con- 
tinued debate thenceforward between North and 
South over the tariff. The Missouri Compromise 
of 1820, which Jefferson declared alarmed him "like 
a fire-bell in the night/' as indicating a permanent 
dissociation of sections, was in reality a truce-treaty 
between antagonistic political and economic sys- 
tems. 

Slavery was at first a mere incident in these dif- 
ferences. For years after the Missouri Compromise 
negro slaves as domestic servants were taken by 
their owners into the Territories without let or hin- 
drance; and even in the Northwest Territory, w'hich 
had been given to the Union by Virginia, and where 
slavery had been prohibited by the Ordinance of 
1787 in the original language of the Thirteenth 
Amendment, the " institution '^ was regarded in no 
unkindly way.^ The responsibilities of the govern- 
ment in regard to slavery were recognized both in 
the treaty of peace in 1783 and the treaty of peace 
in 1814. Each contained clauses obligating Great 
Britain to return negro property carried off during 
the two wars. 

1 Munford, Virginia's Attitude, pp. 26, 27, 28, 



48 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

The abolition of slavery, originating in the hu- 
manitarianism of the Pennsylvania Quakers, was 
agitated for many years by a small following before 
it attracted any considerable attention; and in 
1832, when South Carolina undertook to "nullify" 
the tariff bill of that year and Jackson met the 
nullification movement with his proclamation of 
December 16 and sent a naval force to Charleston 
harbor, each of the twenty-seven States and Terri- 
tories was nominally slaveholding except Vermont; 
though the number of slaves in the New England 
States and in those of the North, especially Ohio 
and Indiana, which when yet a Territory, in 1803, 
had memorialized Congress to suspend the provision 
of the Ordinance of 1787 prohibiting slavery in the 
Northwest Territory, was negligible.^ 

In 1790 New York and Georgia had stood not 
far apart in the number of slaves possessed by each; 
but by 1800 the slave population of the South had 
increased thirty-three per cent, and the next dec- 
ade showed a much greater divergence. Whitney's 
cotton-gin had largely revolutionized the economic 
relation of the sections. The farmers of the Northern 
States were enabled to sell their slaves, who had 
become an expensive burden to them, to the cotton- 
planters of the South, who in the year 1793, the 
date of Whitney's invention, had produced ten 
thousand four hundred and sixty bales of cotton, 

* Force, National Calendar, 1832, p. 159. 



POLITICS IN STATE AND NATION 49 

and who produced in 1810 one hundred and seventy- 
seven thousand eight hundred and twenty-four 
bales, of which they exported about three-fourths 
at fifteen and one-half cents a pound.^ Yet even 
with the progressive economic cleavage between 
the manufacturing and commercial North and the 
agricultural South, the aboHtion movement con- 
tinued to develop slowly, and its propagandists 
were the humanitarians alone. 

But the humanitarians were imbued with pro- 
found convictions, and were strenuous and militant 
in their propagandism. The abolitionists were 
among the earhest secessionists. Their reprobation 
of the legalized holding of human beings in bondage 
was such that they wished to destroy the Union 
rather than remain in it with slaveholders. They 
sent into Congress as early as 1827 petitions for the 
abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia; 
and these petitions continued to come in imtil on 
the 25th of February, 1850, Giddings of Ohio pre- 
sented to the House the resolutions of citizens of 
Pennsylvania and Delaware praying for the "im- 
mediate and peaceful dissolution of the American 
Union.^' 

In January, 1843, the Massachusetts Anti- 
Slavery Society resolved : " That the compact which 
exists between the North and the South is a cove- 
nant with Death and an agreement with Hell, in- 

* Cotton, p. 149, and note 1. 



^50 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

volving both parties in atrocious criminality; and 
should be immediately annulled." ^ 

The American Anti-Slavery Society affirmed the 
sentiment at its tenth anniversary meeting in New 
York City, in May, 1844, resolving that ^^ secession 
from the present United States government is the 
duty of every abolitionist," and Garrison declared 
in 1854: ^' There is but one honest, straightforward 
course to pursue, if we would see the slave-power 
overthrown, — the Union must be dissolved"; while 
Wendell Phillips said that disunion was "written 
in the counsel of God." Schouler, referring to this 
declaration of Garrison's and the occasion of its 
utterance, says: ^^Such was the tenor of anniver- 
sary speeches and resolutions through the next six 
years whenever and wherever meetings were held 
of our Anti-Slavery societies." ^ 

But these expressions of passionate feeling on 
the part of a small band of enthusiasts, though in- 
dicating a tendency, did not represent the thought 
of the non-slave-possessing States of the period, 
who had no conscious wish to see on their Southern 
border a republic with an anti-tariff policy, neces- 
sitated by its social and economic conditions, which 
would be the direct opposite of that of a commer- 
cial and manufacturing North. 

1 Virginians Attitude, p. 217, citing William Lloyd Garrison, by 
his children, vol. Ill, p. 88. 

2 IHd., pp. 100, 218, 414; Schouler, Hist. U. S., V, p. 319; Niles's 
Register, vol. 66, p. 192; Martyn, Wendell Phillips, p. 207. 



CHAPTER V 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

On February 26, 1845, Davis, then in his thirty- 
seventh year, contracted a second marriage. His 
bride was Varina Howell, a daughter of William 
B. Howell of Natchez, Mississippi. Her grand- 
father was Governor Richard Howell of New Jersey, 
who was a native of Newark, Delaware, and whose 
family name occurs frequently on the roster of the 
early members of the Welsh Tract Baptist Meeting 
House "at the foot of the Iron Hill,'^ of whose con- 
gregation Shion Dafydd, Jefferson Davis's great- 
grandfather, had been a member. The second Mrs. 
Davis was the companion and survivor of her hus- 
band's subsequent fortunes through a long life, 
and his devoted and self-sacrificing helpmeet. She 
was his amanuensis when he wrote his Rise and 
Fall of the Confederate Government, and was herself 
the author of Jefferson Davis : A Memoir, a work 
in two large volumes which presents a vivid narra- 
tive of the career of its subject. 

The humanitarian view of slavery had made in- 
significant progress prior to 1844, the year preced- 
ing Davis's election to Congress; but when the 
territorial extension of the ^' institution " began to 

51 



52 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

involve the question of sectional power and equilib- 
rium the processes of federal disintegration began 
also. The Whigs of the South were drifting toward 
State-rights, and the Northern Whigs, the suc- 
cessors of the National Repubhcans of the earlier 
decades of the century, were moving in the direc- 
tion of affiliations which took final shape in the 
Republican party of 1856. The Jacksonian Van 
Buren Democracy of the North, which had been 
Hamiltonian in its conduct, if not in its professed 
creed, since Jackson's time, was closely sympathetic 
with the movement; and Northern Whiggery and 
Northern Democracy drew together, imperceptibly 
but inevitably, in their respective attitudes toward 
the sectional differentiation of political power. The 
economic differences between North and South, as 
always theretofore, lay within the very core of the 
approaching physical struggle over slavery.^ 

Davis took a conspicuous part in the debate of 
Congress on the two questions of foreign policy 
involved in the Oregon boundary and the Mexican 
issues. He illustrated his independence of thought 
and action in differing with his party associates on 
the Oregon question, although he did not wholly 
concur with the opposition. He advocated the 
continued joint occupancy of the disputed terri- 
tory, and opposed the proposition to give notice 

» Tyler, The Whig Party in the South; W. & M. College Quarterly, 
xxiii, pp. Iff. ; Cotton, chapters 34 and 35. 



IN HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 53 

to Great Britain of a termination of the treaty au- 
thorizing it. In the course of the debate he gave 
utterance to his feelings of devotion to the con- 
stitutional Union, as he conceived it to have been 
formed by the fathers of the Republic, as he did on 
many other occasions. 

"As we have shared in the toils," he said, "so 
we have gloried in the triumphs of our country. 
In our hearts as in our history are mingled the 
names of Concord and Camden and Saratoga and 
Lexington and Plattsburg and Chippewa and Erie 
and Moultrie and New Orleans and Yorktown and 
Bunker Hill. Grouped all together they form a 
record of the triumph of our cause, a monument 
of the common glory of our Union. What South- 
ern man would wish it less by one of the Northern 
names of which it is composed? Or where is he 
who gazing on the obelisk that rises from the 
ground made sacred by the blood of Warren, would 
feel his patriot^s pride suppressed by local jeal- 
ousy?" ^ 

In the presidential campaign of 1844 he had ad- 
vocated the admission of Texas into the Union by 
simple enactment of Congress, instead of by treaty. 
As a member of Congress, he voted in accordance 
with this view, which was that of Tyler's admin- 
istration; and he supported with his vote the 
presidential declaration, after the battles of the 

^Walthall, Davis, p. 13; Memoir, I, p. 234. 



54 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

Rio Grande^ that hostilities existed by the act of 
Mexico. He also voted for organizing a volun- 
teer force for the war, and for appropriations neces- 
sary to its vigorous prosecution; but with the mili- 
tary directness with which his West Point education 
seems to have influenced his character more deeply 
than any other factor in its formation, he antag- 
onized as unconstitutional the authority conferred 
by Congress on the President of appointing the 
general officers of the volunteer army. 

On the question of the tariff he pursued the 
course of the strict-construction party. That the 
tariff, like slavery, though even earher, had become 
a sectional issue, owing to its operation upon the 
one hand on a manufacturing and commercial sec- 
tion of the country constantly increasing in popu- 
lation through foreign immigration, and upon the 
other on an agricultural one into which European 
immigrants had ceased to come on account of the 
presence of the negro, is indicated in the historical 
fact that in Jackson's administration all the Northern 
Democrats in the House of Representatives but 
two voted for the protective bill of 1832. As early 
as 1820 a protective tariff act had been passed by 
the House and rejected by the Senate; and the tariff 
issue continued to hold the larger place in the con- 
test of the sections and in the discussions of con- 
stitutional interpretation until it was dwarfed by 
the growing anti-slavery movement after 1844. 



IN HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 55 

Davis's first resolution, offered three weeks after 
he had taken his seat as a member, foreshadowed 
his undeviating advocacy, as long as he was in the 
public service, of what is now known as "prepared- 
ness." It was as follows: 

That the Committee on Military Affairs be instructed 
to inquire into the expediency of converting a portion of 
tlie forts of the United States into schools for military 
instruction, on the basis of substituting their present gar- 
risons of enlisted men by detachments furnished from 
each State of our Union in ratio of their several repre- 
sentatives in the Congress of the United States.^ 

The resolution appears to have been without 
result; and beyond his committee work in con- 
nection with the tariff bill, and his speech on the 
Oregon question, and one against the rivers and 
harbors appropriation bill, he took only a quiet and 
undemonstrative part in the business of the House. 
In the latter speech he antagonized extravagant 
expenditures and attacked the sectional character 
of the proposed appropriations.^ 

He was deeply interested at this time in the 
operations of the army of occupation on the Rio 
Grande under General Taylor; and when, on May 
28, 1846, the House, in committee of the whole, 
had under consideration the resolution tendering 
the thanks of Congress to Taylor for his services, 

1 Mem<nr, I, p. 228. * Memoir, I, pp. 236-238. 



56 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

Davis cordially supported it. In his speech he 
inadvertently excited the anger of Andrew John- 
son; and to this episode he attributed the beginning 
of the relentless hatred with which Johnson pursued 
him in the years following the fall of the Confeder- 
acy. He protested, in the course of his remarks 
on the resolution, against certain unjust criticisms 
on the army and Military Academy at West Point 
which had been made by a member from Ohio, and 
expressed the hope that the member would learn 
the value of a military education from the story of 
the location, construction, and defenses of the 
bastioned field-works opposite Matamoras; and he 
incidentally inquired if the member believed that 
a blacksmith or a tailor could have achieved the 
results which had been obtahied by the educated 
soldiers of the American army, in crumblmg the 
stone walls of Matamoras to the ground. He men- 
tioned these two callings at random, not knowing 
or thinking of either blacksmith or tailor being pres- 
ent. The Ohio member avowed himself a black- 
smith, and made a good-natured retort. Johnson, 
however, took the matter up the next day and, con- 
gratulating himself upon being an artisan, spoke 
sneeringly of the "illegitimate, swaggering, bastard, 
scrub aristocracy," and declared that when a blow 
was struck against the class of mechanics and artif- 
icers, either direct or by innuendo, from Whig or 
Democrat, he would resent it, "while he invoked 



IN HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 57 

all the tailors of history, beginning with Adam, to 
do honor to his class/' Davis replied apologetically 
that he had intended no attack or reflection upon any 
particular occupation or business, but that "his 
opinion was simply that war, like other knowledge, 
must be acquired." ^ 

» Memoir, I, pp. 243, 244. 



CHAPTER VI 
MONTEREY AND BUENA VISTA 

The regiment which the call for volunteers re- 
quired of Mississippi was organized at Vicksburg 
while Davis was still a member of the House of 
Representatives. It elected its field-officers and 
made him its colonel. A messenger was sent to 
Washington to notify him of his election. The 
tariff bill, in which he was deeply interested, was 
under discussion; but the soldierly inclination pre- 
vailed over the legislative, and the commission which 
was tendered him was promptly accepted. 

The President, upon learning of his determination 
to leave Washington for the front as soon as the 
necessary arms and equipment for his command 
could be furnished, urged him to retain his seat in 
the House until the final vote might be taken on the 
tariff bill. He gave Davis his personal assurance 
that in the meantime the War Department would 
receive instructions to meet his requisitions. 

The relations between Polk and the newly elected 
colonel of volunteers were friendly, and in a measure 
intimate; and, in addition to his promise, the Presi- 
dent assented to the further request that Davis and 
his regiment might be permitted to continue with 
General Taylor until the close of the war. 

5S 



MONTEREY AND BUENA VISTA 59 

The feeling of General Scott against Davis, which 
was later expressed in Scott^s Memoir, in which 
he characterized the Mississippian as a "deadly 
enemy/' had already developed.^ Davis made a 
requisition for a thousand percussion-rifles of the 
Whitney model, which were then manufactured at 
New Haven. Scott promptly offered objection to 
the use of such an untried weapon in an enemy coun- 
try, saying that he preferred the flintlock musket 
to a gun which up to that time had never been 
used by the army. Davis was insistent, however, 
and Scott finally consented that four of the six com- 
panies in the regiment might have the Whitney rifles; 
but he refused to permit the other companies to be 
armed with any weapon except the old-fashioned 
musket then in use. But the new colonel was stub- 
born and succeeded eventually in having his requisi- 
tion filled. His regiment got their Whitney rifles, 
and the introduction of the weapon in this way into 
the service constituted the army's first use of an 
arm which later became famous as "the Mississippi 
rifle." 2 

Davis's regiment had already set out from the 
seat of war when he left Washington to join them. 
He caught up with his command at New Orleans, 
whence the regiment was transported by sea to 



* Van Home, Repudiation in Miss., p. 9, citing Memoir of General 
Scott, LL.D., p. 148 (note) and p. 593, in "Notes." 
2 Walthall, Davis, pp. 14, 15. 



60 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

Point Isabel, in Texas. Here they disembarked and 
for several weeks awaited further transportation up 
the Rio Grande. This interval their commander 
utilized in instructing his officers in a manual of arms 
which he had prepared, and in driUing both officers 
and men until, through his energies they became 
one of the best prepared of the regiments in the 
American army.^ 

Transportation having been finally furnished, the 
regiment reached Camargo on the Rio Grande, where 
Taylor^s army was encamped; and here, for the first 
time since their parting years before, Davis and 
Taylor met. Whatever feelings of alienation or of 
enmity might have existed between them had now 
disappeared, in the interval of time and under the 
influence of a common sorrow. Davis, in support- 
ing the resolution of thanks to Taylor and his com- 
mand which had been adopted by Congress after the 
battles of the Rio Grande, had eulogized both army 
and commander, and had said of Taylor that "the 
world had not a soldier better qualified for the ser- 
vice he was engaged in"; and old "Rough and 
Ready" had recognized the kindliness of the action 
and of the speech. 

Taylor^s army consisted at this time of about 
twelve thousand men, and his lines extended from 
Camargo to Point Isabel. From the former point he 
moved into Mexican territory. He left six thousand 

1 Walthall, Davis, p. 15. 



MONTEREY AND BUENA VISTA 61 

of his troops along the border, and with the rest 
of his force, including Davis^s Mississippians, he 
approached Monterey, one hundred miles distant 
from Camargo, which was held by General Ampudia 
with a force of ten thousand Mexicans. Here oc- 
curred the storming of the city, in which Davis and 
his regiment took a conspicuous part, that was fol- 
lowed by its surrender. Taylor and Ampudia, in a 
personal interview, each selected three commissioners 
to arrange the terms; and of the three Americans 
Colonel Davis was one. 

It was agreed that the city, with all artillery, 
munitions, and pubHc property, should be turned 
over to the American army, and that the Mexican 
troops, retaining the arms and accoutrements of their 
infantry and cavalry and one field-battery, should 
retire beyond a fixed line, which was not to be 
crossed by the armed forces of either side for eight 
weeks or until otherwise ordered by one or both of 
the two governments. 

These terms were severely criticised by politicians, 
who regarded them as too favorable to the Mexicans, 
and they were disapproved by the American Govern- 
ment. In the controversy over them Davis de- 
fended the action of Taylor in conceding the terms 
which the Mexicans had urged. It was believed by 
the American general, and in this view Davis and his 
co-commissioners concurred, that considerate treat- 
ment of the enemy by the invaders would at once 



62 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

indicate to Mexico a determined purpose on the part 
of the United States and a disincHnation to arouse 
the ill will of the local populace. He wrote to his 
wife that there were good reasons for thinking that 
the forces defeated at Monterey would be withdrawn. 
But Santa Ana, the Mexican commander-in-chief, 
was defiant; and issued a proclamation of his pur- 
pose to dictate terms to the invading enemy "on the 
banks of the Sabine River." 

In his report of the battle Taylor mentions Davis 
among other officers who served under his eye and 
conducted their commands with "coolness and gal- 
lantry" against the enemy. ^ 

After Monterey he obtained a sixty days' leave 
of absence^ which would give him time to reach Mis- 
sissippi and to spend two weeks there with his wife, 
who was in an impaired condition of health. At 
the expiration of his leave of absence Davis returned 
to his regiment, which had continued with Taylor, 
then at Saltillo, the capital of the Mexican state 
of Coahuila. After the fall of Monterey the Amer- 
ican forces had gradually occupied and were then 
in possession of the three states of Coahuila, New 
Leon, and TamauHpas, each of which had been sub- 
jected in the course of the winter without serious 
opposition and with no other important battle. 
Taylor's army at Saltillo was considerably reduced 
by the withdrawal, in January, 1847, of nearly all 

» Memoir, I, pp. 309, 334. 



MONTEREY AND BUENA VISTA 63 

of the regulars, to take part in the campaign which 
Scott was about to open from Vera Cruz as a base 
against the city of Mexico; and Santa Ana, in the 
late winter, having gathered an army of from eight- 
een to twenty thousand men at San Luis Potosi, 
was advancing against Saltillo. Taylor, upon in- 
formation of his approach, selected a strong defen- 
sive position at a point some seven miles south of 
Saltillo, near a hacienda known as "Buena Vista,** 
and with an army of about five thousand volunteers 
awaited the approach of the enemy. On the morn- 
ing of the 22d of February Santa Ana appeared 
in front of Taylor^s position and forwarded to him 
a note demanding an unconditional surrender, giv- 
ing an hour for an answer. Taylor, as soon as he 
could write a reply, sent a curt refusal: "I beg leave 
to say that I decline acceding to your request." 

In the battle which ensued occurred Davis^s 
famous stand, which saved the day for the Amer- 
ican troops, and in which he made use of the "V" 
movement of throwing his men into the form of a 
"re-entering angle," with both flanks resting on 
ravines, to meet a charge of cavalry coming down 
an intervening ridge. This formation exposed the 
enemy to a converging fire. The manoeuvre is re- 
garded by mihtary men as interesting, and under 
the circumstances effective, on account of its quick 
conception and skilful execution; but that it was 
an emergency movement and not one to be imitated 



64 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

in other conditions is indicated by the fact that 
Taylor makes no mention of it in his report of the 
battle. 

Early in the action Davis was severely wounded 
by a musket-ball which entered his foot near the 
ankle-joint; but; though suffering severely, he re- 
mained on the field in command of his men and 
retired for surgical treatment only after the fight 
was over. 

He continued to suffer from the wound, from 
which he did not completely recover for five years, 
during two of which he was compelled to go on 
crutches. 

In his report of the battle of Buena Vista Taylor 
says: 

The Mississippi Riflemen, under the command of 
Colonel Davis, were highly conspicuous for gallantry 
and steadiness, and sustained throughout the engage- 
ment the reputation of veteran troops. Brought into ac- 
tion against an immensely superior force, they maintained 
themselves for a long time unsupported, and with heavy 
loss, and held an important part of the field until rein- 
forced. Colonel Davis, though severely wounded, re- 
mained in the saddle until the close of the action. His 
distinguished coolness and gallantry, and the heavy loss 
of his regiment on this day, entitle him to the particular 
notice of the government.^ 

The campaign of the Rio Grande ended with 
Buena Vista, and early in the following summer 

1 Memoir, I, p. 334. 



MONTEREY AND BUENA VISTA 65 

Davis returned to Mississippi with his regiment, 
the term of enhstment of whose members had ex- 
pired. At New Orleans they were received with 
enthusiastic applause, as they marched through 
Canal Street to Lafayette Square, where they were 
addressed in an eloquent speech by Sergeant S. 
Prentiss, then a member of the local bar, to which 
Davis rephed in fitting terms. Even more enthu- 
siastic demonstrations met them at Natchez and 
at Vicksburg. 

At New Orleans Davis found a letter awaiting 
him from President Polk, accompanying a com- 
mission as brigadier-general in the volunteer army. 
The same conscientious conviction with regard to 
the strict construction of the Constitution which 
had caused him when a young officer in the North- 
west, in the nullification days, to determine that 
he would resign his commission and his military 
career rather than bear arms against a sovereign 
State of the Union, now determined his course. 
He declined the proffered commission.^ 

^Memoir, I, p. 360; Dodd, Life, p. 91. 



7 



CHAPTER VII 
THE "GREAT CONTROVERSIES'* 

Upon his return to Mississippi Davis was appointed 
by Governor Brown United States senator to fill 
the vacancy occasioned by the death of Jesse 
Speight. When the legislature assembled soon 
afterward he was unanimously elected for the un- 
expired term; and he took his seat at the opening 
of the first session of the Thirtieth Congress in De- 
cember; 1847. 

His military reputation gave him the chairman- 
ship of the committee on mihtary affairs; and he 
was appointed one of the regents of the Smith- 
sonian Institution. This last position he held until 
August, 1852; taking a prominent part in the or- 
ganization of the Institution and in its subsequent 
conduct.^ 

At this time the "great controversies/' which 
culminated something more than a decade later 
in sectional war, began to take definite shape. The 
question of the federal use of the taxing power 
had assumed a sectional character in the beginning 
of the government; and when Davis was elected 

1 History Smithsonian Inst., I, pp. 463, 482. 
66 



THE ^^ GREAT CONTROVERSIES" 67 

to the Senate the struggle over the tariff and the 
question of slavery in the Territories were irresis- 
tibly concurring to divide the country into two an- 
tagonistic political sections. 

In the debate in the First Congress on the bill 
recommended by Hamilton for taxing imports in 
order to meet the interest on the pubhc debt, a dif- 
ference of opinion arose as to whether the tariff 
should be protective or not; and this difference 
developed in 1816 into a challenge, on the part of 
those who opposed protection, of the constitutional 
power of the government to lay protective duties.^ 
Between the tariff of 1789 and that of 1816 sev- 
enteen acts marked the tendency in the direction 
of high duties, and Hamilton's famous "Report" 
on manufactures, which contains the earliest for- 
mulation of American protective principles, was one 
of the most important events of the period. Cal- 
houn began his political career as a protectionist;^ 
and Webster always referred to the tariff of 1816, 
which had been introduced by Lowndes of South 
Carolina, and ably supported by Calhoun, as a 
South Carolina measure.^ New England, whose 
factories were increasing in 1826, had theretofore 
antagonized protection as inimical to its commer- 
cial interests; and Webster had opposed the tariff 



iLalor, Cydopcedia: Tariffs of U. S., Ill, p. 858. 

» Calhoun, Works, II, p. 169. 

3 Webster, Works, III, pp. 297, 502; Cotton, p. 179. 



68 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

of 1816 in speeches of which Goldwin Smith has 
said that there is nothing better on the side of free 
trade.^ Until 1828 South Carohna had been largely 
Federalist, because of Charleston's commercial char- 
acter as a seaport; but Virginia and the rest of the 
South were from the beginning anti-tariff. As South 
Carolina's attitude was exceptional in the South, 
so at that time was the attitude of New England 
in the North. The tariff of 1828 was a prelude to 
that of 1832, which caused nullification. It was 
the result of a scramble of selfish interests, and be- 
came known as the "tariff of abominations.'' Cal- 
houn, in 1828, changed from a tariff to an anti-tariff 
advocate. Whitney's cotton-gin had made cotton 
a factor of tremendous sectional economic impor- 
tance, enhancing the value of slave property neces- 
sary for its production. 

South Carolina's exports at this time were largely 
exceeded in value only by those of New York and 
Louisiana, and but slightly by those of Massa- 
chusetts. Southern exports, as a whole, were much 
greater than Northern exports. The South held 
anti-tariff meetings, and Hayne said to the Charles- 
ton Chamber of Commerce of the "tariff of abomi- 
nations" that "the rich manufacturers of the North 
originated the bill, in order that they might secure 
a monopoly of the home market and enhance their 
profits; and that nothing but a firm remonstrance 

1 The United States, p. 186; cited, Cotton, p. 180, 



THE ^' GREAT CONTROVERSIES" 69 

from the planting States could prevent the ruin of 
the South." To this the chamber repKed with a 
" remonstrance/' denouncing the proposed tariff as 
"unjust and unconstitutional." ^ 

The question of the tariff sprung to the forefront 
of sectional controversy; and the issue of slavery 
had made but slight impression on New England 
and the North in 1835, when Garrison was mobbed 
in Boston by anti-abolitionists, or upon the North- 
west in 1847, when a similar mob murdered Lovejoy 
in Alton, Illinois. But in the fourth decade of the 
century slavery presented itself as a new phase of 
the struggle; and the sectional difference over taxa- 
tion and tariff was resolved into a more passionate 
antagonism, of which the economic question re- 
mained a vital ingredient. A strict construction 
of the Constitution was the basic principle of anti- 
protectionism, as it was of slavery in the Territories 
under the sectional political situation which had 
then developed. 

When Davis entered the Senate, in 1847, the tide 
of feeling was rising high. That body was Demo- 
cratic and anti-tariff. The House was Whig, and 
greatly divided on sectional issues. Two years 
earlier the sections had grappled with each other 
in the contest over the admission of Texas. What 
was known as "Mason and Dixon's line," physically 
marking the division of the two nations from 1766, 

1 Cotton, p. 187; Jervey, Life of Hayne, pp. 217-219. 



\^ 



70 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

was cut deeper on the map by the growth of the 
economic issue of cotton. 

Florida and Iowa came into the Union at this 
time, and their admission maintained the '^equihb- 
rium of the sections," as Arkansas and Michigan 
had done in 1836. But the entrance of Texas meant 
the addition to the area of slavery of ^' an enormous 
territory, big enough for the formation of eight or 
ten States of the ordinary size, and thus to increase 
tremendously the poHtical uifluence of the Southern 
States, and the slaveholding class. For this the 
Northern members of Congress were not prepared."^ 

Northern abolitionist opinion, led by John Quincy 
Adams, held that the annexation of Texas would 
and should warrant a dissolution of the Union; and 
Garrison, moved not by the economic but the hu- 
manitarian impulse, and hostile to a constitution 
which contravened the ^^ higher law,'^ proposed in 
Boston that Massachusetts should secede. In the 
South the cotton-planters asserted that the aboli- 
tionist programme was ^^ nothing less than a pro- 
posal to destroy, root and branch, the whole in- 
dustry of their section." ^ 

In February, 1848, peace was made with Mexico; 
and the United States had gained a large increase 
of territory lying in the anti-tariff, slavery, cotton 
section. As a compromise between those who ad- 

* Cotton, p. 205, citing Wilson, Division and Reunion, p. 143. 
» Cotton, pp. 205 ff. 



THE ^^ GREAT CONTROVERSIES'' 71 

vocated and those who opposed the exclusion of 
slavery from the Territories, the Democratic Senate 
passed a bill establishing Territorial governments 
in Oregon, New Mexico, and California, with a 
provision that all questions concerning slavery in 
these Territories should be referred to the Supreme 
Court of the United States. The measure was de- 
feated in the House. A bill to organize these Terri- 
tories was then enacted by the Senate, with an 
amendment extending the Missouri Compromise 
line to the Pacific. The amendment was rejected 
by the House, again by a sectional vote; and the 
bill thus modified became a law. 

When it was proposed to apply the anti-slavery 
clause of the Ordinance of 1787 to Oregon, Davis 
offered a proviso "that nothing contained in this 
act shall be so construed as to authorize the prohibi- 
tion of domestic slavery in said Territory, whilst it 
remains in the condition of a Territory of the United 
States.'' He supported his amendment, which was 
advocated by Calhoun, in a speech in which he ar- 
gued that the processes of time and of circumstance 
would determine the end of slavery. 

"This problem," he said, "is one which must 
bring its own solution; leave natural causes to their 
full effect, and when the time shall arrive at which 
emancipation is proper, those most interested will 
be most anxious to effect it." ^ 

^ Memoir^ I, p. 407. 



72 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

He concluded with the assertion that the struggle 
was one between sectional parties, and that if neither 
section would yield there should be a peaceful dis- 
solution of the Union. 

The agricultural South was stirred to great ap- 
prehension by the development of Northern an- 
tagonism to slavery. Calhoun foretold what he 
conceived would be the calamitous consequence of 
the success of the abolitionist movement in a me- 
morial to the people of the South in 1849, which 
was signed by a large number of the Southern dele- 
gations in Congress. 

"If it" [emancipation of the slaves] "ever should 
be effected," he wrote, "it will be through the 
agency of the Federal government, controlled by 
the dominant power of the Northern States of the 
Confederacy, against the resistance and struggle 
of the Southern. It can then only be effected by 
the prostration of the white race; and that would 
necessarily engender the bitterest feelings of hos- 
tility between them and the North. But the re- 
verse would be the case between the blacks of the 
South and the people of the North. Owing their 
emancipation to them, they would regard them as 
friends, guardians, and patrons, and centre accord- 
ingly all their sympathy in them. The people of 
the North would not fail to reciprocate and favor 
them, instead of the whites. Under the influence 
of such feehngs, and impelled by fanaticism and 



THE ^^ GREAT CONTROVERSIES^^ 73 

love of power, they would not stop at emancipation. 
Another step would be taken to raise them to a 
political and social equahty with their former owners, 
by giving them the right of voting and holding public 
offices under the Federal government. . . . But 
when once raised to an equality, they would become 
the fast political associates of the North, acting 
and voting with them on all questions, and by this 
perfect union between them holding the white race 
at the South in complete subjection. The blacks, 
and the proffigate whites that might unite with 
them, would become the principal recipients of 
Federal offices and patronage, and would, in con- 
sequence, be raised above the whites of the South 
in the political and social scale. We would, in a 
word, change conditions with them, a degradation 
greater than has yet fallen to the lot of a free and 
enlightened people." ^ 

The contest over slavery in the new Territories of 
California, New Mexico, and Oregon was concluded 
by an act which omitted any provision on the sub- 
ject in the two first-named prospective States, but 
which excluded the "institution" from Oregon. 

The Democratic party in 1848 nominated Lewis 
Cass, of Michigan, for President and WiUiam 0. 
Butler, of Kentucky, Davis^s division commander 
at Monterey, for Vice-President, and adopted a 
strict-construction platform. The Whig candidates 

1 S. B. N., IV, p. 403, citing Calhoun, Works, VI, pp .310, 311. 



74 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

were General Taylor, a Southerner and a slave 
owner, and Millard Fillmore of New York. In 
view of the heterogeneous composition of the Whig 
party ^ and of the differences in the ideas of its 
Northern and Southern members upon the political 
issues of the day, its convention, as when it nomi- 
nated Harrison and Tyler in 1839, adopted no plat- 
form and voted down a resolution affirming the 
Wilmot Proviso, which had been offered two years 
before in the House of Representatives by David 
Wilmot, a Pennsylvania Democrat, applying to 
any newly acquired Territory the provision of the 
Ordinance of 1787, that "neither slavery nor in- 
voluntary servitude shall ever exist in any part of 
said territory except for crime, whereof the party 
shall be first duly convicted." ^ 

The Free Soilers nominated Martin Van Buren 
and Charles Francis Adams, and adopted a plat- 
form declaring that Congress had no more power to 
make a slave than to make a king, and that there 
should be no more slave States and no slave Terri- 
tories.^ 

Davis supported the Democratic nominees; but 
did not hesitate, when Taylor^s character was as- 
sailed in partisan discussion, to defend him earnestly 
and ably. 

1 Cole, The Whig Party in the South, pp. 30, 31. 

2 Cotton, pp. 206 ff. ; Dyer, Great Senators, pp. 36-38. 

3 Johnston, Am. Politics, p. 156; Dyer, Great Senators, pp. 103-4. 



THE ''GREAT CONTROVERSIES^' 75 

The Whig nominees were elected, and their elec- 
tion was followed by a renewal of the agitation over 
the question of slavery in the Territories through 
the indorsement of the Wilmot Proviso by the legis- 
latures of Northern States, as many as fourteen of 
which, at the end of 1849, had adopted the doctrine 
of the proviso in principle if not in terms. Through- 
out all this controversy the Southern delegates 
denied that it was their purpose to extend or per- 
petuate slavery. Their contention was simply 
that Congress had no right to prohibit slavery in 
the Territories, which when ready for admission 
as States had final power over the subject, each 
for itself. 

The Thirty-first Congress met on December 3, 
1849, with a Democratic majority in the Senate. 
In the House there was no party majority, and the 
nine Free Soil members held the balance of power. 
Vermont presented resolutions of its legislature de- 
claring that slavery was a crime, and could not 
longer be permitted in any Territory or under any 
federal jurisdiction, and instructing its senators 
and representatives to use their utmost efforts to 
carry these resolutions into effect. Mangum, the 
Whig senator from North Carolina, read a petition 
in the Senate from a mass-meeting held at Wilming- 
ton, asserting that if Congress consented to the 
demands of the North with regard to slavery in 
the new Territories, the State would be justified 



76 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

in withdrawing from the Union. Parties North 
and South had become sectionally amalgamated 
for and against the Wihnot Proviso. Mangum 
said, in presenting his petition: "All parties in the 
South are merged on this question, and will stand 
together shoulder to shoulder, to defend those rights 
which we mean to defend, which we can defend, 
and which we will defend at all hazards.' '/ 

California applied for admission as a State Feb- 
ruary 13, 1850, and the struggle over slavery in 
the Territories waxed more bitter. Clay offered 
his "compromise bill," the purpose of which was 
to reconcile the differences between the sections. 
It covered seven propositions : "(1) The admission 
of any new States properly formed from Texas; 
(2) the admission of California; (3) the organiza- 
tion of the Territories of New Mexico and Utah, 
without the Wihnot Proviso; (4) the passage of 
the last two measures in one bill; (5) the payment 
of a money indemnity to Mexico; (6) a more rigid 
Fugitive Slave Law; (7) the aboHtion of the slave 
trade, but not of slavery, in the District of Co- 
lumbia.'^ ^ The bill was subsequently divided into 
a number of separate bills, and enacted into law, 
becoming known as the "Compromise of 1850." 

California was admitted into the Union September 
9, 1850, and the new Fugitive Slave Law was met 

1 Dodd, Life, p. 117; 31st Cong., 1st sess., Feb. 6, 1850. 

2 Johnston, Am. Pol., p. 161. 



THE "GREAT CONTROVERSIES'' 77 

with the enactment by a number of Northern legis- 
latures of '^ personal-liberty" laws, which in effect 
nullified its provisions.^ 

Davis, although opposing Taylor's election, had 
remained on friendly terms with him. He had re- 
ceived a letter from him just prior to his election, 
in which he had said that the South must boldly 
and decisively resist the encroachments of the North. 
Their friendly relations continued until after the 
President's inauguration; but they soon changed 
under the influence which Seward acquired over 
the new executive.^ 

Davis had taken an active and leading part in the 
debates in the Senate over the slavery question. 
He opposed Clay's compromise bill, as did Cal- 
houn; and he offered as a measure of conciliation 
the extension of the line of thirty-six degrees thirty 
minutes, fixed by the Missouri Compromise of 1820, 
through the newly acquired territory of Texas and 
New Mexico, to the Pacific. His proposition was 
defeated by a sectional vote. His antagonism to 
the compromise measures was earnest and vigorous. 
He believed with Calhoun that "it is a true maxim 
to meet danger on the frontier in politics as well 
as in war." ^ 

He went back to Mississippi feeling that the 
fight over slavery in the Territories was a drawn 

1 Hart, Chase {S. S.), pp. 163-170; Johnston, Am. Pol, pp. 162, 163. 

2 Dodd, Life, p. 118. ' Cotton, p. 206, 



78 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

battle; and that the inevitable final settlement of 
the question lay in the not distant future. He had 
said in the previous autumn, in a letter addressed 
to his constituents: "The generation which avoids 
its responsibility on this subject sows the wind and 
leaves the whirlwind as a harvest to its children; 
let us get together, and build manufactories, enter 
upon industrial pursuits, and prepare for our own 
self-sustenance." ^ 

Taylor died July 9, 1850, and was succeeded by 
Fillmore, the Vice-President. In the same year the 
Mississippi Legislature re-elected Davis to the Sen- 
ate as his own successor for the full term from 1851 
to 1857. 

In the meantime many members of the incon- 
gruous Whig party, who in the South had united 
with the State-rights democracy under the appre- 
hension of continued federal encroachment, now 
joined with those Democrats who feared an ap- 
proaching rupture of the Union in forming a " Union 
party,'^ and this Union party was especially strong 
in South Carolina, and in Davis^s own State of Mis- 
sissippi. 

General Quitman, who had been elected governor 
of Mississippi about the time when Davis entered 
the Senate, resigned in 1850 to meet a federal in- 
dictment for complicity in the filibustering expedi- 
tion of Lopez against Cuba, and was acquitted. 

1 Dodd, p. 123. 



THE ^^ GREAT CONTROVERSIES'' 79 

In 1851 Quitman was renominated by the Demo- 
crats. A special election was held in September 
for delegates to a convention which had been called 
by the legislature to consider the questions then 
agitating the country; and the State democracy 
was startled to find itself defeated in this contest 
by the new Union party by a majority of seven 
thousand five hundred. 

Davis, since the death of Calhoun, had come to 
be recognized as one of the foremost of the national 
State-rights democracy, and he was its leading 
representative in his own State. His previous 
poHtical career had demonstrated the sincerity of 
his belief in the strict-construction view of the 
Constitution, and his speeches in the Senate had 
consistently declared his lack of sympathy with 
disunion. On one occasion he had said in debate 
that if any respectable man should call him a "dis- 
unionist," he would answer him in monosyllables,^ 
and his political career had squared with his words. 
He had opposed Clay's compromise bill because 
he beheved that the settlement of the questions 
which it involved should not be deferred, but met 
and concluded on the threshold, not by secession 
or by disruption of the Union, a doctrine which 
the abolitionists had never ceased to proclaim,^ x^i^ 
but by a definition of the rights of the contending 
sections, to the end that thereafter differences and 

1 Walthall, Davis, p. 31. « Morse, Lincoln, I {S. S.), 231. 



80 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

their consequent discords and recriminations might 
be ended. 

Quitman, the Democratic nominee for governor 
of Mississippi, was a follower of the nuUifierS; with 
whose doctrine Davis never sympathized, and he 
had expressed his nullification views in a communi- 
cation to the State legislature. The overwhelming 
defeat of the Democrats in the election of members 
to the convention was probably attributable to 
Quitman's renomination, which had come about 
as a recognition of his vindication in the filibustering 
matter. He regarded the result of the convention 
election as foreshadowing his own defeat when the 
gubernatorial election should be held, and with- 
drew from the contest. 

The Mississippi Democrats, left in serious predic- 
ament by Quitman's withdrawal, turned to Davis. 
He had been recently elected to the Senate for the 
full term of six years. The probabiHty was that 
he would be defeated if he should accept the nomi- 
nation, which was pressed upon him by the State 
executive committee of the party. He was confined 
to his house at the time by ill health, involving 
an affection of the eyes, which required the ex- 
clusion of light, and was in no physical condition 
to make the strenuous canvass which the exigency 
of the situation demanded. But with characteristic 
courage and will he accepted the nomination and, 
entering vigorously into the campaign, spoke in 



THE '^ GREAT CONTROVERSIES'' 81 

every county in the State. The result was, as he 
had anticipated, defeat by the Union party's can- 
didate, Henry S. Foote; but the majority of his 
successful opponent was reduced from the seven 
thousand six hundred which the Union party had 
had in the convention election to one thousand 
against Davis. 

In a letter written in August, 1852, he refers to 
his position in the Senate on the "compromise 
measures," and in the local struggle in his own State 
in the succeeding year: 

If I know myself, you do me justice in supposing my 
efforts in the session of 1850 were directed to the main- 
tenance of our constitutional rights as members of the 
Union, and that I did not sympathize with those who 
desired the dissolution of the Union. After my return 
to Mississippi in 1851, I took ground against the policy 
of secession, and drew the resolution adopted by the 
democratic State-rights convention of June, 1851, which 
declared that secession was the last alternative, the final 
remedy, and should not be resorted to under existing 
circumstances. I thought the State should solemnly set 
the seal of her disapprobation on some of the measures of 
the " Compromise." ^ 

Broken down by his campaign for governor, he 
was stricken with fever, accompanied by an acute 
superinflammation of the left eye, from which it 
never recovered. His physical powers, which were 

^ Memoir, I, p. 471; letter to Senator James A. Pearce of Mary- 
land. 



82 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

normal in the days of his cadetship at West Point, 
had been diminished through exposure to the rigors 
of the Northwestern winter, when pneumonia at- 
tacked him; and his health continued frail during 
his years as senator and secretary of war. He was 
never a well man after his first young manhood. 
He had continuous trouble with his eyes, and suf- 
fered from a frequently recurrent nervous affection, 
which harassed him throughout the trying period 
when the cares of a warring government weighed 
on him. 



CHAPTER VIII 
FOUR YEARS IN THE CABINET 

After his defeat in the gubernatorial campaign 
of 1851 Davis retired to Briarfield and again oc- 
cupied himseK with his books and his plantation. 
In the following year the presidential election oc- 
curred. The Democrats again adopted a strict- 
construction platform, indorsed the Virginia and 
Kentucky resolutions, and pledged the party to 
the faithful observance of the Compromise Act 
and to a steady opposition to any agitation of the 
slavery question. The Whigs adopted a loose-con- 
struction platform, which indorsed the compromise 
measures, including the Fugitive Slave Law, in 
terms similar to those of the democracy. The Free 
Soilers followed with a platform which denounced 
the compromise and the two parties which had sup- 
ported it, declaring that slavery was a sin against 
God and a crime against men. 

The Free Soilers failed to carry a single State. 
The Whigs were successful in Massachusetts, Ver- 
mont, Kentucky, and Tennessee. The rest of the 
country went Democratic, and the compromise 
had apparently accompHshed the purpose of those 
who supported it. 

S3 



84 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

Davis was active in the campaign, making 
speeches in his own State and those adjoining. His 
acceptance of the party platform seems inconsistent 
with his intense opposition to the Compromise Act; 
but Mississippi and its people favored the com- 
promise, and to their wishes he accorded his al- 
legiance. 

The newly elected President invited him to take 
a place in the cabinet, which he declined, as he 
states, for "private and personal reasons." ^ Pierce 
then asked him to attend the inauguration on March 
4, 1853. He accordingly went to Washington, and 
upon the renewed request of the President accepted 
the secretaryship of war. 

Carl Schurz writes of Davis at this time: "I had 
in my imagination formed a high idea of what a 
grand personage the War Minister of this great 
republic must be. I was not disappointed. There 
was in his bearing a dignity which seemed entirely 
natural and unaffected, — that kind of dignity which 
does not invite famiUar approach, but will not render 
one imeasy by lofty assumption." ^ 

His appointment was justified by his successful 
administration of the office, whose duties he dis- 
charged throughout his term to the satisfaction of 
the army and with the general approbation of the 
country. 

Among the measures which he proposed or carried 

1 Memoir, I, p. 477. * Dodd, Life, p. 132 



FOUR YEARS IN THE CABINET 85 

into effect were the revision of the army regula- 
tions, the introduction of the light-infantry or rifle 
system of tactics, which he had inaugurated with 
his Mississippi regiment in Mexico, the manufacture 
of rifled muskets and pistols, and the use of the minie 
ball, the addition of four regiments to the army, 
the enlargement of the seacoast and frontier de- 
fenses and forts, a system of geographical explora- 
tions in the West, and a movement for ascertaining 
the best route for a transcontinental railroad. To 
these may be added a series of valuable experiments 
in the casting of heavy guns and in the manufacture 
of gunpowder.^ 

Additional duties were imposed upon his office, 
including the direction and construction of govern- 
ment works; and under his supervision the national 
capitol was completed. He recommended a govern- 
ment foundry for making heavy guns and cannon, 
and he showed the need and urged the establish- 
ment of an armory in the West. 

The War Department was intrusted with the task 
of furnishing an adequate supply of water to the 
city of Washington, and under his direction this 
work was done. The stone aqueduct in the District 
of Columbia, known as Cabin John Bridge, com- 
prised a part of this construction ; and on it a tablet 
was placed, upon which was inscribed, with those 
of other officials connected with the work, his name 

^ Walthall, Davis, p. 33; Appleton, Cyc. Am. Biog., II, p. 98. 



86 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

and office. This inscription was obliterated in 1862, 
by order of a successor in the War Office, and was 
restored in 1909, through the efforts of organizations 
of Southern women, by order of President Roose- 
velt.i 

In his second report he presented the statistics 
of the five mihtary departments into which the 
territory of the United States was divided, and 
demonstrated the physical inadequacy of the army, 
which then did not exceed eleven thousand men, 
to protect a seaboard and foreign frontier and routes 
through a country with an Indian population of 
more than four hundred thousand, of whom one-half 
were hostile; and he succeeded, before he left the 
cabinet, in raising the army to fifteen thousand 
effectives, with seventeen thousand on the rolls.^ 

His attitude toward a transcontinental railroad, 
to be constructed by the National Government, be- 
ginning at Memphis and extending to the Pacific, 
was justified by him, not as being authorized by 
the ^^ general welfare'^ clause of the Constitution, 
which he viewed with suspicion, but as warranted by 
the powers granted for the public defense.^ Calhoun 
had taken a similar position with reference to the 
improvement of the Mississippi River and its trib- 
utaries on the ground that they were to be regarded 

* So. Hist. Soc. Papers, xxxviii, pp. 141-156. 
2 Dodd, Life, chap. IX, citing Reports of Secretary of War to 
33d Cong., 1st and 2d sess.; Memoir, I, chaps. XXXIV and XXXV. 
' Memoir, I, p. 499. 



FOUR YEARS IN THE CABINET 87 

as in the nature of "inland seas"; and Davis carried 
the doctrine farther in his railroad project by the 
conclusion that for purposes of military defense 
the National Government might constitutionally un- 
dertake internal improvements in States and Terri- 
tories as well as on "inland seas." His support of 
the transcontinental railroad proposition was based 
on "the military necessity for such means of 
transportation, and the need of safe and rapid 
communication with the Pacific slope, to secure its 
continuance as a part of the Union." ^ 

Means of military transportation had become an 
important subject of consideration in the South- 
west, where, after the Mexican War, a number of 
army posts had been established. The difficulties 
of moving supplies for the army in the recently 
acquired territory were great; and the rough and 
desert character of much of the country made it 
impassable for horses and mules. The construction 
of railroads in this section apparently lay in the far 
future; and if the country was to be opened up, 
means of communication with the frontier forts and 
settlements were essential. 

Davis, who had given the subject much considera- 
tion, behoved that the camel was ideally adapted 
to transportation puiposes in the Southwest. The 
animal was known to be the most satisfactory and 
important beast of burden in countries of the Old 

1 Walthall, Davis, p. 34. 



88 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

World which were not dissimilar to the rough and 
arid regions of the Southwest, on account of its 
swiftness and its ability to carry heavy loads and 
to go for a long time on scanty food and water; 
and it could stand the extremes of heat and cold 
which characterized this region better than could 
the horse or mule. 

He took up the question in 1853, and in his report 
of that year recommended a trial of the experi- 
ment. The appropriation asked for was refused, 
and the recommendation was subsequently re- 
peated. In 1855, through the exertions of Senator 
Shields of lUinoiS; an appropriation of thirty thou- 
sand dollars was secured; and Davis sent to the 
Orient; for the purpose of securing the camels, Major 
Henry C. Wayne, of Georgia, who had served in 
the quartermaster's department during the Mexican 
War, and Lieutenant David D. Porter of the navy, 
afterward famous as a naval officer on the Union 
side in the war between the States. After an in- 
vestigation by Wayne of the various kinds of camels, 
which disclosed that there were three thousand of 
the one-humped Arabian species then in use in the 
Crimea, and that more were to be imported there, 
he and Porter shipped in February, 1856, thirty- 
three camels to America.^ 

A second cargo was brought over in 1856, consist- 
ing of forty-six, and among them six dromedaries, 

^Sen. Ex. Doc, No. 62, 34th Cong., 3d sess. 



FOUR YEARS IN THE CABINET 89 

which were presented to the government by the 
Sultan of Turkey. They were taken first to San 
Antonio, and later to Val Verde, a military post 
sixty miles to the southwest, which became the 
permanent camel-station. Experiments made with 
them demonstrated that in a journey from San 
Antonio to Val Verde the camels easily carried six 
hundred pounds each, six of them transporting as 
much as twelve horses could haul in wagons, and 
in forty-two hours less time. The camels made 
the sixty miles in two days and six hours, while 
the horses required more than four days. Other 
tests showed that they could ascend mountain trails 
where wheeled vehicles were unable to go, and could 
traverse without fatigue muddy roads which were 
impassable for wagons. The greatest difficulty with 
them was that they would not cross streams until 
water was thrown in their faces. 

At the close of 1856 Davis reported that in his 
opinion the camel experiment was successful,^ and 
John B. Floyd, his immediate successor in the War 
Office, was so convinced of the usefulness of the 
animals on the Western plains, that in December, 
1858, he recommended the importation of a thou- 
sand more. The recommendation, however, which 
was repeated in 1859, and again in 1860, was dis- 
regarded by Congress in the political excitement 
over weightier things. The experiment, which 

1 Sen. Ex. Doc, No. 5, 34th Cong., 3d sees., p. 22. 



x 



90 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

might have proved successful, failed on account of 
the war, and the subsequent rapid development of 
the railroads.^ 

-In 1855 Davis obtained the enactment of legisla- 
tion creating four new regiments. The appoint- 
ment of their officers was vested in the President; 
but the secretary of war exercised no inconsidera- 
ble influence in the selection of them. The col- 
onels appointed to the two regiments of cavalry 
were Albert Sidney Johnston and Edwin V. Sumner. 
The lieutenant-colonels were Robert E. Lee and 
Joseph E. Johnston; and the majors were George 
H. Thomas, William H. Emory, WiUiam J. Hardee, 
and John Sedgwick. They were all West Pointers. 
Among the company officers were George B. McClel- 
lan, Thomas J. Wood, Robert S. Garnett, Earl Van 
Dorn, E. Kirby Smith, George Stoneman, Robert 
Ransom, David S. Stanley, J. E. B. Stuart, John 
B. Hood, and Fitzhugh Lee, all of whom were grad- 
uates of the United States Military Academy. The 
roster of these two regiments contained the names 
of nine major-generals, nine brigadier-generals, one 
inspector-general, and twelve field and staff officers 
of the Union armies in the war, and of five full gen- 
erals, one lieutenant-general, six major-generals, ten 
brigadier-generals, and two colonels in the Con- 
federate armies. 

^ Fleming, Davis^s Camel Experiment, pp. 141-152. 



CHAPTER IX 
SLAVERY IN THE TERRITORIES 

Davis left the cabinet upon the inauguration of 
Pierce's successor. He had been re-elected to the 
Senate, and on March 4, 1857, he again took his 
seat in that body. 

What was left of the Whig party had in the pre- 
ceding year been absorbed by the Know-Nothings, 
who nominated Fillmore and Andrew J. Donelson, of 
Tennessee. The Democratic nominees were James 
Buchanan and John C. Breckinridge, and their 
platform was one of strict construction, condemn- 
ing Know-Nothingism, approving the Kansas-Ne- 
braska bill, and substituting Stephen A. Douglas's 
"squatter sovereignty'' for the Missouri Compromise 
of 1820. The doctrine of "squatter sovereignty" 
was that the people of a Territory could determine 
at any time for themselves the question of slavery 
or freedom there. The Southern Democratic inter- 
pretation of the Constitution was that the people 
of a Territory were powerless to determine the ques- 
tion of slavery while in a Territorial condition, and 
could only do so when forming a State govern- 
ment.^ 

» Lothrop, Seward {S. S.), p. 64. 
91 



92 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

William L. Yancey, of Alabama, "the orator of 
Secession/' challenged this peculiar doctrine of 
Douglas's on the threshold of its earlier appearance, 
with "the Alabama platform'' of 1848, which 

Resolved, That the opinion advanced or maintained by 
some that the people of a territory acquired by the com- 
mon toil, suffering, blood, and treasure of the people of 
all the States can, in other event than the forming of a 
State Constitution, preparatory to admittance as a State 
in the Union, lawfully or constitutionally prevent any 
citizen of any such State from removing to or settling in 
such territory with his property, be it slave property or 
other, is a restriction as indefensible in principle as if such 
restriction were imposed by Congress.^ 

The new RepubHcan party nominated against 
the Know-Nothing Fillmore and the Democrat 
Buchanan, John C. Fremont, of California, and his 
running mate was WilHam L. Dayton, of New Jer- 
sey. Their loose-construction platform advocated 
internal improvements by the Federal Government, 
including a railroad to the Pacific, and declared it 
to be the right and duty of Congress to prohibit 
both slavery and polygamy in the Territories. It 
demanded the admission of Kansas as a free State, 
condemned the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, 
and protested against the further extension of 
slavery. 

Buchanan's election was followed in December, 

* Brown, Lower South, pp. 131, 132. 



SLAVERY IN THE TERRITORIES 93 

1856, by the decision of the Dred Scott case, in 
which the dehvery of the supreme court's opinion 
was deferred until two days after the inauguration. 
It came at a time when the struggle over the Kansas- 
Nebraska bill, for the creation of Territorial govern- 
ments in the region now contained in those two 
States, had profoundly stirred the passions of the 
sections.^ The supreme court declared in the Dred 
Scott case the historical fact that the ancestors of 
negro slaves were not regarded as persons by the 
makers of the Constitution, but as chattels;^ that 
the Missouri Compromise, prohibiting slavery north 
of the parallel of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes, 
was unconstitutional and void, and that Congress 
had no right to prohibit the carrying of slaves into 
any State or Territory.^ 

Thus the Dred Scott case affirmed the position 
taken and held by Davis and the State-rights school 
of democracy as the correct interpretation of the 
Constitution on the question of slavery and its ex- 
tension or restriction. 

Buchanan in his inaugural address had announced 
that there was a case pending in the supreme court 
which might still the gathering storm; but the con- 
trary result happened when the court's decision 
was promulgated. Despite the fact that the North 



^ Cluskey, Polit. Encyc, pp. 346 ff. 

^ Lewis, Great Am,. Lawyers, IV, p. 154, R. B. Taney. 

'Thayer, Constit. Law, I, p. 480. 



94 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

had always proclaimed the supreme court as the 
arbiter of all sectional questions, the cry went up 
from the anti-slavery men that the highest "tri- 
bunal'' in the land had determined that the black 
man had no rights which the white man was bound 
to recognize; and the charge was freely made of a 
conspiracy between the chief justice who had de- 
livered the opinion, the President of the United 
States, and the Democratic leaders, intended to 
bring about the trial and the decision for partisan 
political purposes.^ 

The Kansas-Nebraska bill was introduced in the 
Senate in 1854, and came up in the House two 
months later. This political measure increased the 
passions of the sections; and 'Hhe first gun of the 
war," says a Massachusetts historian, "was doubt- 
less fired in the Territory of Kansas; the second in 
the raid of John Brown." ^ 

The bill declared the Missouri Compromise of 
1820 to be inconsistent with the constitutional 
principle of non-interference with slavery by Con- 
gress, and asserted that it was void and had been 
repealed by the Compromise of 1850, and that there- 
after each Territory north or south of thirty-six de- 
grees thirty minutes should admit or exclude slavery 
as its people decided. The "Anti-Nebraska" men 

1 Rhodes, Hist., Ill, p. 270; Lewis, Great Am. Lawyers, IV, p. 163 
and note, R. B. Taney. 

2 Lunt, Origin of the Late War, p. 272. 



SLAVERY IN THE TERRITORIES 95 

early in 1856 adopted the name of "Republicans/* 
first proposed, it is said, late in 1855, by Governor 
Seward of New York. The new party was a loose- 
construction party, and favored a protective tariff, 
internal improvements, and a national bank cur- 
rency; and it declared that the Federal Government 
possessed the power to control slavery in the Terri- 
tories. 

Out of the political turmoil in Congress over the 
Kansas-Nebraska bill and the repeal of the Mis- 
souri Compromise sprung a fierce and bloody 
physical struggle for the possession of the embryo 
State of Kansas, in which slave-State settlers and 
free-State settlers, each seeking by immigration or 
invasion to pre-empt it, had recourse on either side 
to arson, murder, and pitched battle. "It was 
... an armed and most murderous conflict, fought 
out upon that ground, between the representatives 
of extreme sentiments at the North and the South, 
and a warfare the more brutal and demoralizing 
in all its influences and results, that it was carried 
on by predatory and irresponsible bands of reckless 
and violent men, supplied with means of outrage, 
and prompted to deeds of blood, by those in both 
parts of the country who watched at a safe distance 
the progress of their respective schemes." ^ This 
warfare in the spring and siunmer of 1855 was suc- 
ceeded in 1856 by the attempt of the Territorial 

* Lunt, Origin of the Late War, p. 272. 



96 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

Legislature to form a free-State government; without 
the approval of the federal authorities, and by the 
sending of United States troops to Kansas to en- 
force the laws. 

By the Dred Scott decision the leaders of the 
strict-consti*uctionist State-rights party felt them- 
selves justified in their political conduct; but Davis 
had continued to doubt the permanent efficacy of 
the Compromise of 1850, and in a speech which he 
delivered at Jackson, Mississippi, October 4, 1857, 
he declared that the election of 1856 was but a truce 
between the sections, in which both sides might 
gather strength for a renewed struggle.^ 

In the North the abolitionists continued to fan 
the flames of anti-slavery propagandism, and to kin- 
dle fires of Southern secession by immediate extra- 
legal and physical resistance to the fugitive-slave 
statutes. In Boston it took one thousand one hun- 
dred and forty federal soldiers with loaded muskets 
to enforce the law against mobs led by men of such 
high standing as Higginson, Phillips, and Parker.^ 
Uncle Tom^s Cabin caught the Northern heart, 
and laid the foundation in England for the later 
decision of Great Britain between the North and 
South in the matter of intervention. The John 
Brown raid occurred. Its leader was captured in the 
arsenal at Harper's Ferry by United States soldiers 

1 Dodd, Life, p. 169. 

2 Rhodes, I, pp. 500-6; Cotton, pp. 228-230. 



SLAVERY IN THE TERRITORIES 97 

commanded by Robert E. Lee and J. E. B. Stuart, 
and hmig at Charlestown after a fair and impar- 
tial trial. An appeal in his behalf was sought by 
the most learned lawyer of his day in Virginia, whose 
petition exhausted the Anglo-Saxon law upon the 
subject; but the supreme court of the State af- 
firmed unanimously his conviction of treason against 
the Commonwealth of Virginia. The execution took 
place in the presence of Virginia troops under the 
command of the governor, and in the ranks of a 
company from Richmond appeared the ominous fig- 
ure of John Wilkes Booth.^ 

The United States Senate investigated the John 
Brown episode, and its committee made two re- 
ports. The minority report, signed by CoUamer, of 
Vermont, and Doohttle, of Wisconsin, expressed 
no sympathy with Brown in his purpose; and de- 
clared that the "raid'' was "but an offshoot from 
the extensive outrages and lawlessness in Kansas." 
The majority report, signed by James M. Mason, 
of Virginia, Jefferson Davis, and G. N. Fitch, of 
Indiana, "viewed after fifty years," is pronounced 
by Brown's biographer, Villard, "disappointingly 
ineffective from the slavery point of view, when it 
is considered that such able men as Jefferson Davis 
and James M. Mason constructed it. Their narra- 
tive of what happened at Harper's Ferry is suc- 
cinct and accurate, and tells the facts without any 

» O. G. Villard, John Brown Fifty Years After, pp. 450, 451, 555. 



98 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

attempt at coloring. As for their opinions, the 
majority dwelt upon Brown's desire to incite in- 
surrection' among the slaves, and declared that *it 
was owing alone to the loyalty and well-affected 
disposition of the slaves that he did not succeed 
in creating a servile war, with its necessary atten- 
dants of rapine and murder of all sexes, ages, and 
conditions.' " 

In conclusion, the majority reported the invasion 
as "simply the act of lawless ruffians under the 
sanction of no public or political authority," which 
had been made with the aid of money and firearms, 
contributed by citizens of other States, "under cir- 
cumstances that must continue to jeopard the safety 
and peace of the Southern States," and against 
which Congress "has no power to legislate," and 
declared that if the several States would not, for 
the sake of policy or the desire for peace, guard 
against the recurrence of such an act, the com- 
mittee could "find no guarantee elsewhere for the 
security of peace between the States of the Union." ^ 

Davis, whose health had been delicate for many 
years, became seriously ill in the winter of 1858. 
His eyes, which had given him trouble after his 
gubernatorial campaign in 1850, again were af- 
fected, and he suffered greatly from their condi- 
tion, and for two months was confined to a darkened 
room. His affected vision and the continuance of 

1 Villard, John Brovm, pp. 581-2. 



SLAVERY IN THE TERRITORIES 99 

his ill health kept him from his place in the Senate 
for most of the session; though he appeared on the 
floor at times, moved by an indomitable will, with 
head bandaged and leaning on his cane, to take 
part in the debates which continued to revolve about 
slavery in Kansas, and Robert J. Walker's adminis- 
tration of the Territory as its governor. When the 
session closed, he was advised by his physician to 
spend the summer on the coast of Maine; and, ac- 
companied by his wife and their two children, he 
went by water from Washington to Portland, where 
he found an agreeable climate and a number of 
friends and acquaintances among its residents and 
visitors. 

During his stay at Portland he was the subject 
of many friendly attentions, both of a social and 
political character; and he was received every- 
where he went in New England with marks of esteem 
and respect. In Boston he was the guest of the 
city, and by invitation he delivered an address in 
Faneuil Hall, where he was introduced to the au- 
dience by Caleb Gushing, who had been Pierce's 
attorney-general while Davis was secretary of war.^ 

The address at Boston, which was delivered 
October 19, 1858, breathed a spirit of devotion to 
the Union and a pride in its history. After paying 
tribute to Franklin Pierce, "from the neighboring 
State of New Hampshire," who, he said, knew "no 

^Memoir, I, pp. 602, 603. 



100 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

North, no South, no East, no West, but sacred main- 
tenance of the common bond, and true devotion to 
the common brotherhood,'' he entered upon a dis- 
cussion of State sovereignty as a constitutional 
right, and passed from that subject to the omni- 
present question of the prohibition by Congress 
of the introduction of slave property into the Terri- 
tories. He dwelt upon the mutual and reciprocal 
interests of the sections, and especially upon the 
economic features of their relation.^ 

The speech was received with enthusiasm, and 
met with the approval of the New England Demo- 
cratic leaders, who believed that the preservation 
of the Union lay in the maintenance of strict-con- 
structionist constitutional interpretation. 

But Davis's constituents were hardly pleased 
with his visit to New England and his cordial re- 
ception by "the Yankees"; and many of them 
boldly asserted that it was a bid for support in the 
coming contest for the presidential nomination. 

The principles which he continued to maintain 
on the floor of the federal Senate during the acri- 
monious debates over slavery, from 1857 to 1861, 
were embodied in a series of resolutions introduced 
by him February 2, 1860, and intended to express 
the poHtical opinion of the State-rights democracy. 
They were accepted, with slight modifications, by 
his party colleagues, and were fully debated and 

^Memoir, I, p. 630. 



SLAVERY IN THE TERRITORIES 101 

finally adopted in May. The Democrats in the 
Senate supported them in a division which was 
upon party but not upon sectional lines, while the 
Republicans consistently and unanimously opposed 
them. They were seven in number, and were elab- 
orated in his speeches in their advocacy, and espe- 
cially in that deHvered by him May 7. The first 
three stated the recognized principles of the State- 
rights democracy in its attitude toward slavery 
under the Constitution; the fourth asserted the 
constitutional inability of Congress to limit the 
rights of slave owners settling in the Territories, 
and of Congress to intervene, should the courts 
fail in their duty; the fifth insisted that it was the 
duty of the federal courts to protect slave owners 
in the enjoyment of their property in the Terri- 
tories, and should they fail in this. Congress must 
intervene for such protection; the sixth asserted 
that no Territory should be debarred from statehood 
on account of the existence or non-existence of slav- 
ery within its limits, and the seventh reasserted the 
vaHdity of the Fugitive Slave Law, and declared 
that State laws in contravention of it were hostile 
to the Constitution and revolutionary in their sig- 
nificance.^ 

A characteristic of all Davis's speeches on these 
resolutions is the expression of a sincere devotion 

1 Dodd, Life, p. 182; Cong. Globe, 36th Cong., 1st sess., Feb. 2, 
March 1; Memoir, I, pp. 661-4. 



102 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

to the Union and a deprecation of the sectional 
feeling which threatened its continuance. This 
sentiment is dominant in his remarks upon the 
proposition made in the latter part of 1860, when 
the fires of secession were already blazing in South 
Carolina, for the appointment of the famous " Com- 
mittee of Thirteen '^ by the Senate. He had asked 
to be excused from serving on this committee, but 
upon a reconsideration of the vote of consent, he 
withdrew his objection, and said: 

If, in the opinion of others, it be possible for me to do 
anything for the public good, the last moment while I 
stand here is at the command of the Senate. If I could 
see any means by which I could avert the catastrophe of 
a struggle between the sections of the Union, my past 
life, I hope, gives evidence of the readiness with which 
I would make the effort. If there be any sacrifice which 
I could offer on the altar of my country to heal all the 
evils, present or prospective, no man has the right to 
doubt my readiness to make it.* 

On April 23, 1860, the Democratic National Con- 
vention met at Charleston, South CaroHna, with 
the Northern democracy advocating Douglas's doc- 
trine of "squatter sovereignty, '' and William L. 
Yancey leading the extremists of the slaveholding 
democracy of the South in opposition to the Northern 
democratic view of slavery in the Territories. After 
a series of stormy sessions, the convention divided 

1 Walthall, Davis, p. 38. 



SLAVERY IN THE TERRITORIES 103 

over the refusal of the Douglas wing to agree to 
the resolutions offered by the Southern Democrats . 
affirming the Dred Scott decision, and declaring 
that neither Congress nor Territorial Legislatures 
had the right to prohibit slavery in the Territories. 
The Douglas Democrats offered a counter-proposi- 
tion that the party would abide by the decisions 
of the supreme court, and the convention adopted 
a strict-constructionist platform, which declared 
for a Pacific railroad and the acquisition of Cuba. 
The delegations from a number of Southern States, 
including that of Alabama, headed by Yancey, 
withdrew; and after taking fifty-seven ballots be- 
tween the candidates, the convention adjourned, 
to meet in Baltimore, June 23, 1860. The seceding 
delegates, who had organized another convention 
in Charleston, adopted their platform, and ad- 
journed to Richmond, Virginia, and thence also 
to Baltimore, where they reconvened, June 28. 
The "Squatter Sovereignty" Convention nominated 
Douglas and Johnson; the "Dred Scott" Conven- 
tion nominated Breckinridge and Lane; and Yancey, 
within a year, was on his way to England to secure 
recognition for the new slaveholding cotton re- ■. 
public, which his voice more than any other's had - 
served to call into existence.^ 

In the meantime the Republican party had met 
in convention at Chicago, May 16, and in a loose- 

^ Brown, The Lower South, p. 146. 



104 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

construction platform denounced Democratic threats 
of secession and Democratic administration in 
Kansas and at Washington, declared for freedom 
in the Territories, and pronounced in favor of a 
protective tariff, internal improvements, and a 
Pacific railroad. The RepubHcan nominees were 
Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, and Hannibal Ham- 
lin, of Maine. The Constitutional Union party as- 
sembled at Baltimore, May 19, and nominated Bell 
and Everett on the platform: "The Constitution 
of the country, the Union of the States, and the 
enforcement of the laws." 

At the election in November, 1860, Lincoln and 
Hamlin were elected. They received one hundred 
and eighty votes in the electoral college, Breckin- 
ridge and Lane received seventy-two. Bell and 
Everett thirty-nine, and Douglas and Johnson 
twelve. "Squatter sovereignty" carried only New 
Jersey and Missouri, and the Constitutional Union 
party won in the border States of Virginia, Ten- 
nessee, and Kentucky. The lower South and Dela- 
ware voted for Breckinridge and Lane, and the 
remaining States of the Union for Lincoln and 
Hamlin. 

The successful candidates, even outside of the 

States which became the Confederacy, received 

less than one-haK of the popular vote. The total 

popular vote was 4,680,193. Of these, Lincoln had 

^ 1,866,452. "The * American people,' says his biog- 



SLAVERY IN THE TERRITORIES 105 

rapher, Morse, ''fell enormously short of showing 
a majority in his favor/' ^ 

Davis's name in the decade preceding the elec- 
tion of 1860 had been frequently suggested for the 
Democratic presidential nomination. In the con- 
vention which assembled in Baltimore in 1852 and 
nominated Pierce and King, he had been warmly 
supported by some of the delegates and especially 
by the delegation from Douglas's own State of Il- 
linois, which voted for him to the last. He had al- 
ways refused, however, to be a candidate, and when 
the democracy gathered to its ill-fated disruption 
in Charleston in 1860, he had requested his friends 
who desired to nominate him not to present his 
name. Yet, in spite of his refusal to enter the lists, 
he received an earnest and persistent support, in- 
cluding that of a number of New Englanders; and 
Benjamin F. Butler, of Massachusetts, afterward 
wrote concerning the episode: "I voted fifty-seven 
times for the nomination of Jefferson Davis." ^ 

After the election of Lincoln, a State convention 
was held in Mississippi, pursuant to an act of the 
legislature passed in anticipation of the event. In 
an advisory conference participated in by the United 
States senators and representatives of the State 
at Jackson, on the third Monday of November, 



^ Morse, Lincoln (S. S.), I, p. 179, note 2. 
* Dodd, Life, p. 173, note, citing "Butler Letter in Johnson Papers, 
Library of Congress." 



106 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

1860, upon the invitation of the governor, Davis, 
though declaring his purpose to sustain the action 
of Mississippi, whatever it might be, argued ear- 
nestly against immediate secession, and counselled 
further forbearance and deliberation.^ 

On December 14, 1860, a number of senators 
and representatives from the South held a meeting 
in Washington, and issued an address to their con- 
stituents. It was widely circulated North and 
South, and added fuel to the flame of sectional dis- 
cord. It stated 'Hhe argument is exhausted. . . . 
In our judgment the RepubHcans are resolute in 
the purpose to grant nothing that will or ought to 
satisfy the South. We are satisfied the honor, safety 
and independence of the Southern people require 
the organization of a Southern Confederacy, — a 
result to be attained only by separate State seces- 
sion." 2 The action of the Mississippi delegation 
at Jackson, and the failure of conciHation through 
the refusal of the Committee of Thirteen to report 
favorably the "Crittenden Compromise" providing 
for an unalterable amendment prohibiting slavery 
north of the parallel of thirty-six degrees thirty 
minutes, and recognizing it during the Territorial 
status south of that line, determined Davis's atti- 
tude toward the address. He took part in the con- 



* Reuben Davis, Mississippi and Mississippians, p. 391; Walthall, 
Davis, pp. 38, 39. 
2 Rhodes, Hist. U. S., Ill, pp. 177, 178. 



SLAVERY IN THE TERRITORIES 107 

ference; and his name appears among the Southern 
senators who signed it. The passions and purposes 
of the sections had gone beyond the heaHng of 
statesmanship. Neither side could see anything of 
justice or right in its adversary's position. ^^ An- 
other day in the Senate," wrote Seward, December 
11, 1860. "Vaporing by Southern Senators; set- 
ting forth the grievances of their section, and requir- 
ing Northern Senators to answer, excuse, and offer 
terms which they are told in the same breath will 
not be accepted.'^ ^ At the close of the first day's 
session of the "Crittenden Compromise'' Commit- 
tee, Toombs wrote: "We came to no compromise, 
and we shall not. I supported Crittenden's Com- 
promise heartily and sincerely, although the sullen 
obstinacy of Seward made it almost impossible to 
do anything. ... At length I saw that the Com- 
promise must fail. With a persistent obstinacy 
that I have never yet seen surpassed, Seward and 
his backers refused every overture. I then tele- 
graphed to Atlanta: ^All is at an end. North de- 
termined: Seward will not budge an inch; am in 
favor of secession.'" ^ 

1 Lothrop, Seward {S. S.), p. 212. 
« jm., p. 64. 



CHAPTER X 
THE GATES OF WAR 

The theoretical right of secession was coeval with 
the Federal Constitution. Virginia, New York, and 
Rhode Island, in ratifying that instrument of reser- 
vations and compromises, solemnly and formally de- 
clared that it recognized such a right. In the con- 
vention it was proposed to invest Congress with the 
power of coercion, which was the antithesis of seces- 
sion. The proposition was opposed by Madison, 
who offered a resolution, adopted without opposi- 
tion, that 'Ho coerce the States is one of the maddest 
projects ever devised." It has been said by Davis 
himself: "The present Union owes its very exist- 
ence, by separate secession of its members from 
the former Union, which in its organic principles 
rested upon precisely the same foundation." ^ 

The same views were maintained in the resolu- 
tions and report of 1798-9, from the pen of Madi- 
son, and in the Kentucky resolutions of the same 
period, written by Jefferson.^ 

Massachusetts in its act adopting the Constitu- 

* Davis, Short History, pp. 50, 51; Jour. Fed. Cong., IV, pp. 26, 27, 
456; Mad. Papers, 132. 

* Elliott's Debates, IV, pp. 540-6. 

108 



THE GATES OF WAR 109 

tion called that instrument a "compact/' and Vir- 
ginia, in its act of ratification, expressly reserved 
the right of the State to secede at will, and was re- 
ceived into the Union under that agreement. It 
has been observed that: "it is partisan reading of 
American history" not to see that from the accep- 
tance of the Constitution in 1790 there has been a 
tendency to assert the rights of the States and the 
right of States to sever relations to the Union. 
New England in 1803 and 1804 tried to get five 
States to secede — New York, New Jersey, and the *^ 
New England States. In 1812-14 New England 
practically withdrew from co-operation with the 
Union. ^ 

In the debate on the Orleans Territory bill, in- 
troduced in Congress during the session of 1810- 
11, to enable the people of the Territory of Or- 
leans to form a constitution and government, and 
for its admission as a State into the Union, Josiah 
Quincy, of Massachusetts, declared: "It is my de- 
liberate opinion that if this bill passes, the bonds 
of the Union are virtually dissolved; that the States ^ 
which compose it are free from their moral obliga- 
tions; and as it will be the right of all, so it will be 
the duty of some, to prepare definitely for a separa- 
tion, amicably if they can, violently if they must." ^ 



* Powell, Nullification and Secession, pp. 69, 70, 90. 
^Abridgment of Debates of Congress, IV, p. 327; Dyer, Great Sena- 
tors, pp. 160, 161. 



no JEFFERSON DAVIS 

There was an appeal from the speaker's decision 
that the member from Massachusetts was not in 
order, and the House overruled the speaker by a 
vote of fifty-six to fifty-three.^ Quincy's secession 
declaration antedated Calhoun's entry into Con- 
gress by nearly a year. 

(in New England, down to 1861, secession was 
recognized as a constitutional right. It had been 
affirmatively asserted in the times of the embargo 
and of the Hartford convention, and the abolition- 
ists were persistent adherents of the doctrine and 
advocates of its concrete appHcation.^ During the 
period from the adoption of the Articles of Con- 
federation to 1820, it was the subject of repeated 
threats in different parts of the Union. A separate 
New England confederation was proposed in 1775;^ 
secession was feared by Madison in 1783 as a result 
of the financial collapse of the confederation;^ and 
the danger of it was frequently and freely discussed 
in the debates of the federal convention. 

During the later period of the slavery agitation 
there are numerous instances in which it was sug- 
gested, threatened, or acknowledged. North and 
South ;^ and upon the right of its exercise was based 



^Jervey, Robert Y. Hayne and His Times, p. 34; Dyer, Great 
Senators, pp. 160, 161. 

2 Morse, J. Q. Adams (S. S.), pp. 280, 288. 

3 Hosmer, Samuel Adams (S. S.), p. 306. 

* Gay, James Madison {S. S.), pp. 35, 36. 

5 Morse, Abraham Lincoln {S. S.), I, pp. 192, 193. 



THE GATES OF WAR 111 

the last argument of the strict-construction, State- 
rights, proslavery Democrats of 1861. 

The New York Tribune, edited by Horace Greeley, 
a stalwart abolitionist, in its issue of November 10, 
1860, said: 

And now, if the Cotton States consider the value of 
the Union debatable, we maintain their perfect right to 
discuss it. Nay, we hold with Jefferson to the inalienable 
right of communities to alter or abolish forms of govern- 
ment that have become oppressive or injurious; and if 
the Cotton States shall decide that they can do better 
out of the Union than in it, we insist on letting them go 
in peace. The right to secede may be a revolutionary 
one, but it exists nevertheless; and we do not see how 
one party can have a right to do what another party has 
a right to prevent. We must ever resist the asserted right 
of any State to remain in the Union and nullify or defy 
the laws thereof; to withdraw from the Union is quite 
another matter. And whenever a considerable section of 
our Union shall deliberately resolve to go out, we shall 
resist all coercive measures designed to keep it in. We 
hope never to live in a republic, whereof one section is 
pinned to the residue with bayonets.^ 

In 1861, although the feeling in behalf of the 
Union prevailed among great numbers of its citizens, 
especially in the border States of Virginia, Kentucky, 
Tennessee, and Missouri, the impulse in the direc- 
tion of secession had grown to be overwhelming in 
all the States of the South, except those "on the 

1 Cleveland, Alex. H. Stephens, p. 155. 



y/ 



112 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

border/^ which joined in the movement at last only 
when coercion was invoked. 

Lincoln's theory of the right of a State to leave 
the Union was diametrically opposed to that of 
the Southern leaders, and, as enunciated in his in- 
augural address, was accepted by his followers as 
that of the new Republican party. He said: ^'The 
Union of these States is perpetual.'' "No State 
upon its own mere motion can lawfully get out of 
the Union." "I shall take care, as the Constitu- 
tion expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of 
the Union be faithfully executed in all the States." 
He also declared his purpose to hold, occupy, 
and possess the property and places belonging to 
the government and to collect the duties and im- 
posts.^ 

There was no suggestion in the new federal execu- 
tive's first official communication of any intention 
to interfere with the continuance of slavery in the 
slave States. He was opposed to slavery, and had 
based his debates with Douglas for the Illinois sena- 
torship on the proposition that the Union could 
not continue "half-free and half -slave." But he 
reiterated in his inaugural what he had said in his 
political addresses: "I have no purpose, directly 
or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of 
slavery in the States where it exists. I believe that 
I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no in- 

* Messages and Papers of the Presidents, VI, pp. 5-12. 



THE GATES OF WAR 113 

clination to do so." ^ In 1862 he wrote to Greeley: 
"If there be those who would not save the Union, 
unless they could at the same time save slavery, 
I do not agree with them. If there be those who 
would not save the Union unless they could at the 
same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. 
My paramount object is to save the Union, and 
not either to save or destroy slavery." ^ 

Always, back of the slavery question, and deeper- 
rooted, though inextricably interwoven with it, 
was the economic question, the question of com- 
mercial power, and of governmental ways and means. 
As tobacco had affected the situation in the earlier 
decades of the Union, so cotton played its part in 
the later stages of the sectional struggle. "Cotton," 
says Doctor Scherer, "made the South a free-trade 
section and the North protective; cotton lured the 
South back to slavery; cotton drove the South to 
seek the annexation of new lands for its plentiful 
production, and to insist on the maintenance of 
slave labor on those lands in order to produce it; 
cotton drove the South to an extreme State-rights 
position in those great congressional struggles, in 
which the efforts for territorial expansion became 
inextricably involved; and cotton at last drove 
the South to translate extreme State-rights into 
the terms of secession, while the North, step by 

* Messages and Papers, VI, p. 5. 
« Morse, Lincoln {S. S.), II, p. 107. 



114 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

step, lined up on the opposite side of all these ques- 
tions, which at first had not been sectional at all." ^ 
But the statement is extreme. Cotton had no 
such controlling influence in the great border States 
of Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Mis- 
souri. Even in the cotton States the economic 
question was ultimately translated into one of con- 
stitutional right and self-protection, and the slave- 
holder of South Carolina resented any restriction 
upon Oregon, Utah, and New Mexico, where no 
cotton could be grown, as earnestly as he did that 
upon territory adapted to its cultivation. None 
of the border States was a cotton State. Their 
S3mipathies were with the Union. They were slave 
States, but they were not secession States, and it 
was only upon the threatened coercion of the cotton 
States of the lower South, as indicated in Lincoln's 
call for seventy-five thousand volunteers after the 
fall of Fort Sumter, that they took sides with their 
seceding sisters. Their relation to slavery had been 
largely one of sufferance growing out of necessity. 
The leaders in Virginia from the time of Washington 
and Jefferson had been anti-slavery. Washington 
wrote in 1786 to Robert Morris: "I can only say 
that there is not a man living who wishes more sin- 
cerely than I do to see a plan adopted for the aboli- 
tion of it." ^ Jefferson had arraigned the slave- 

^Scherer, Cotton, p. 253. 

2 Munford, Virginia's Attitude, p. 83. 



THE GATES OF WAR 115 

trade in the original draft of the declaration;^ and 
the great military leaders of Virginia in the war 
between the States had no sympathy with "the 
institution." Lee never owned a slave except the 
few he inherited from his mother, all of whom he 
emancipated many years prior to the war. " Stone- 
wall" Jackson during his life owned only two slaves, 
a man and a woman, both of whom he purchased 
at their own solicitation; and to them he gave the 
opportunity of earning their freedom. The man 
earned and obtained his; the woman refused, pre- 
ferring to remain a servant in her master's family. 
Joseph E. Johnston never owned a slave. A. P. 
Hill never owned a slave. J. E. B. Stuart owned 
two, both of whom he got rid of before the war. 
Fitzhugh Lee never owned a slave. Matthew F. 
Maury owned one slave only, who continued a 
servant and member of his family until after the 
war; and he characterized the "institution" as 
"a curse," ^ and Virginia, which had been the first 
civilized government in the world to aboHsh the 
slave-trade, would have destroyed slavery within 
its territory in the third decade of the nineteenth 
century but for the Southampton negro insurrec- 
tion, in which more than sixty men, women, and 
children were murdered in a servile uprising, that 
was believed by many to have been induced through 

^ Munford, Virginians Attitude, p. 19. 
2 Ibid., pp. 156-8. 



^ 



116 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

the propaganda of the aboHtionists of New Eng- 
land. 

The Crittenden Compromise measures of 1860, 
whose object was to save the Union, were regarded 
with disfavor from the beginning by the Republican 
senators of the Committee of Thirteen. Differences 
had become so great between the contending forces, 
and the passions of the sections were so inflamed, 
that the two wings of the democracy now became 
willing to reunite on the proposition as the last hope 
of preserving the Union. Five of the members of 
the Committee of Thirteen, of which Crittenden 
was chairman, were Republicans. The Southern 
Democrats were three in number, Davis, Hunter, 
of Virginia, and Toombs, of Georgia. The remain- 
ing five were compromise senators from the border 
States.^ Davis had proposed, and it had been agreed 
in the first session of the committee, that no report 
should be made to the Senate, in which a majority 
of the Republicans failed to concur. The Demo- 
cratic senators beHeved that any report would need 
to be supported by some substantial coincidence of 
sentiment to make it worth while. But the com- 
mittee could agree on no plan which met the views 
of the Republican members; and Crittenden's ulti- 
mate individual presentation of his scheme to the 
Senate came too late. On March 2, 1861, the day 
before the final adjournment of Congress, the Crit- 

1 Dodd, Life, p. 195. 



THE GATES OF WAR 117 

tenden Compromise was defeated. Every vote given 
from the six New England States was against it.^ 

On December 20, 1860, the date on which the 
Committee of Thirteen was appointed, South Caro- 
lina, by unanimous vote of its people in convention 
assembled, adopted an ordinance of secession. 
Thurlow Weed, of New York, was visiting Lincoln 
at Springfield when the news came, and bore back 
to Seward, a member of the committee, the newly 
elected President's message on the proposed settle- 
ment: 

No compromise on the question of slavery extension: 
on that point hold firm as steel.^ 

When the Crittenden Compromise came to be 
voted on in the committee, Davis, who had offered 
the suggestion, which had been adopted, in regard to 
the concurrence of a Republican majority, voted 
against the first clause, and Toombs voted with 
him. Davis's enemies charged him with its defeat, 
but his vote was consistent with his previous at- 
titude; and the aboHtionists intended to have no 
compromise.^ 

In the meantime, in anticipation of the action 
of their State convention, the South Carolina dele- 
gation in Congress, on December 8, 1860, visited 

* Mr. Buchanan^s Administration, p. 143. 
2 Dodd, Life, p. 196, note citing Rhodes. 
» Dodd, Life, pp. 195, 196. 



118 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

President Buchanan to gain an understanding about 
the forts at Charleston. They gave the President 
written assurance that Major Anderson, who was 
in command of the Union garrison at Fort Moultrie, 
would not be attacked by South Carolina if the 
military status of the forts should continue un- 
changed; and they left the White House in the 
belief that no aid of any kind would be sent by the 
government to the forts. 

On December 26, within a week after the State 
had seceded, commissioners arrived in Washington 
from the new government of South Carolina, author- 
ized to treat for the ownership of the forts then held 
by the federal forces. Before the commissioners 
could see Buchanan, news came that Anderson had 
moved his garrison from Fort Moultrie to Fort 
Sumter, a stronger position at the mouth of the 
harbor and commanding it. Davis, upon learning 
of this, went with Hunter, of Virginia, and WilHam 
H. Trescott, assistant secretary of war, to the 
White House, and said to the President that he 
had a great calamity to announce. He informed 
him of Anderson's action, and earnestly urged that 
Anderson and his garrison force be ordered back 
to Moultrie. Buchanan referred the matter to his 
cabinet, who decided, under the influence of Holt, 
a Douglas Democrat who had succeeded Floyd in 
the War Department and was later conspicuous 
for his efforts to associate Davis with the assassina- 



THE GATES OF WAR 119 

tion of President Lincoln, that Anderson^s action 
should be sustained. A few days later the steamer 
Star of the West, with men, arms, and provisions, 
was secretly ordered to go from New York to the 
reHef of Sumter. Its mission could have no other 
meaning than war. News of the steamer^s depar- 
ture reached Charleston in advance of its arrival, 
and it was fired on, at the mouth of the harbor, by 
the Carolinians, and returned.^ 

On January 9, 1861, Davis again visited Buchanan, 
and again urged some adjustment of the situation 
at Charleston; but he received no encouragement. 
"Personally," he writes, "I urged the President to 
withdraw this garrison, as it only served as a 
menace, — for it was utterly incapable of holding 
the fort if attacked; while nothing would have 
operated more powerfully to quiet the apprehen- 
sions and allay the resentment of the people of South 
Carolina than the withdrawal of the impotent 
menace.'^ ^ He received no encouragement from 
Buchanan, and upon his return from the White 
House to the Senate the same day, he caused to 
be read in that body the reply of the South Caro- 
lina commissioners to the administration's refusal 
to interfere with the situation at Sumter.^ Be- 
lieving that the country was entitled to a knowledge 
of this important paper, which presented a strong 

1 Dodd, Life, p. 201. 2 Sh(»'t History, p. 57. 

8 O. R. Series I, vol. I, p. 120. 



120 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

statement of the case for secession, and which had 
not accompanied the President's message on the 
subject, he sent a certified copy to the clerk's desk, 
and succeeded in getting the justification made by 
the commissioners into the record of the Senate.^ 

On the day on which the Star of the West had 
sailed, and Davis had paid his last visit of concilia- 
tion to the White House, in an unsuccessful effort 
to avert a collision at Charleston, Mississippi fol- 
lowed South Carolina's lead, and went out of the 
Union. Florida seceded January 10, Alabama Jan- 
uary 11, Georgia January 18, and Louisiana, Jan- 
uary 26. The conventions of these seceding States 
united with South Carolina in naming February 
4, 1861, as the day, and Montgomery, Alabama, as 
the place, for the assembly of a Southern Congress, 
to which each State convention should appoint 
delegates.^ 

On January 20 Davis addressed the Senate, dis- 
cussing at length the "compact" theory of the Con- 
stitution, the doctrine of State sovereignty, and 
the reserved rights of the States, and among them 
the right of secession, as basic and inaUenable. 

In this discourse he said: 

It may be pardoned me, sir, who in my boyhood was 
given to the military service, and who have followed under 

1 C(mg. Globe, 36th Cong., 2d sess., Jan. 9; Dodd, Ufe, pp. 202, 
203. 
' Davis, Short History, p. 59. 



THE GATES OF WAR 121 

tropical suns and over northern snows the flag of the Union, 
suffering for it as it does not become me to speak, if I here 
express the deep sorrow which always overwhelms me, 
when I think of taking a last leave of that object of early 
affection and proud association, feeling that henceforth 
it is not to be the banner which, by day and by night, I 
am ready to follow, to hail at the rising and bless at the 
setting sun. But God, who knows the hearts of men, 
will judge between you and us, at whose door lies the 
responsibility of this. Men will see the efforts I have 
made here and elsewhere; that I have been silent when 
words would not avail, have curbed an impatient tem- 
per, and hoped that conciliatory counsels might do that 
which I knew could not be effected by harsh means. 
And yet the only response which has come from the other 
side has been a stolid indifference, as though it mattered 
not. "Let the temple fall, we do not care." ^ 

On January 21, 1861, with other Southern sena- 
tors, he bade formal farewell to the Senate in an 
address in which he said in conclusion: 

In the course of my service here, associated at different 
times with a great variety of Senators, I see now around 
me some with whom I have served long; there have been 
points of collision, but whatever of offense there has been 
to me I leave here. I carry with me no hostile remem- 
brance. Whatever offense I have given, which has not 
been redressed, or for which satisfaction has not been 
demanded, I have. Senators, in this hour of our parting, 
to offer you my apology for any pain which, in the heat 
of the discussion, I have inflicted. I go hence unencum- 

^ Pamphlet, Speech on the Condition of Things in South Carolina, 
1861, pp. 12, 13. 



122 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

bered by the remembrance of any injury received, and 
having discharged the duty of making the only repara- 
tion in my power for any injury oflPered.^ 

The Mississippi convention, after adopting its or- 
dinance of secession, had provided for a levy of 
ten thousand men, and without his knowledge had 
elected him commander-in-chief of the State forces 
with the rank of major-general. He accepted the 
commission which he found awaiting him on his 
arrival at Jackson. It was an office for the dis- 
charge of whose duties he confidently approved 
himself, and he went to work at once to raise and 
organize his troops. 

Charges had been intimated among the Repub- 
lican leaders in Washington, before his departure 
from the national capital, that he and other 
Southern senators were engaged in treasonable 
conspiracies against the government which war- 
ranted their arrest and imprisonment. In tense 
periods of political crisis exaggerated feelings often 
precipitate illogical action; but, fortunately and 
justly, in this instance the suggestion of the arrest 
and imprisonment of the Southern leaders, and 
notably of Davis, was not carried out. His enemies 
also charged him with the crime of holding his seat 
in the Senate for two weeks after his State had 
seceded.^ 

1 Library of So. Lit., vol. Ill, p. 1266; Memoir, I, pp. 687-695. 
2Dodd, Life, p. 207. 



THE GATES OF WAR 123 

In regard to this, he afterward wrote: 

It was alleged, — and the Comte de Paris has specially 
singled out my name in connection with this disgraceful 
charge, — that we held our seats as a vantage-ground for 
plotting for the dismemberment of the Union. It is a 
charge which no accuser ever made in my presence, al- 
though I have in public debate more than once challenged 
its assertion, and denounced its falsehood, ... As long 
as I held a seat in the Senate, my best efforts were di- 
rected to the maintenance of the Constitution, and the 
Union resulting from it, and to make the Government 
an effective agent of the States for its prescribed purposes. 
As soon as the paramount allegiance due to Mississippi 
forbade a continuance of these efforts, I withdrew from 
the United States Senate. To say that, during this period, 
I did nothing in conflict with what was done or proposed 
openly would be merely to assert my own integrity, an 
assertion which would be worthless to those who doubt 
it, and superfluous to those who believe in it. What is 
said here on the subject for myself, I believe to be also 
true of my associates in Congress.^ 

His withdrawal from the Senate, January 21, 
1861, took place immediately after he received of- 
ficial information of the secession of Mississippi; 
and he remained in Washington for a week after 
his resignation, before starting South, a part of the 
time ill and confined to his bed. 

The four brigadiers designated by the State con- 
vention met him at Jackson, and after he had pre- 

» Short History, pp. 54, 55; Dodd, Life, p. 208. 



124 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

pared; with their assistance, necessary rules and 
regulations for the military forces which they were 
yet to raise and command and had mapped out a 
scheme for the division of the State into miHtary 
districts, for the apportionment of quotas of troops 
to be furnished by each, and for the organization 
of a general staff, he states that "such measures 
as were practicable were taken to obtain necessary 
arms/^ He adds to this the further statement that 
"the State had few serviceable weapons and no 
estabhshment for their manufacture or repair. This 
fact (which is as true of other Southern States as 
of Mississippi) is a clear proof of the absence of 
any desire or expectation of war.'' ^ 

The people of the South had generally anticipated 
a peaceful withdrawal from the Union, when the 
inevitable moment should arrive. But Davis never 
indulged this illusion. His most earnest efforts 
had been put forward to prevent what he early 
perceived would be a sanguinary struggle. He said 
to Governor Pettus, who met him at Jackson for 
the purpose of consulting him about the acquisition 
of arms by the State, and who thought that seventy- 
five thousand muskets would be sufficient: "The 
limit of our purchases should be our power to pay. 
We shall need all and many more than we can get, 
I fear." ^ 

He went from Jackson to Briarfield, to set his 

* Memoir, II, p. 9. ' Memoir, II, p. 8. 



V 



THE GATES OF WAR 125 

house in order for what he reasonably anticipated 
would be a long absence. He conferred with the 
negroes on the place, advising them of their duties 
and responsibilities; and to those in whose judg- 
ment and loyalty he had the greatest confidence, 
he said: "You may have to defend your mistress 
and her children, and I feel I may trust you." ^ 

* Memoir, II, p. 11, 



CHAPTER XI 
FORT SUMTER 

The Congress of delegates elected by the conven- 
tions of the seceding States met in Montgomery, 
February 4, 1861, and prepared a provisional con- 
stitution for the Confederate States of America, 
which was adopted February 8, with the agreement 
that it was to remain in force for one year, imless 
sooner superseded by a permanent instrument. 

It was modelled on the Constitution of the United 
States, but with the uncertainties and obscurities 
of the earlier instrument eliminated. The term of 
the President was fixed at six years, and he was 
made ineligible to re-election. This was a recur- 
rence to the original draft of the Federal Constitu- 
tion of 1787. His power of absolute removal was 
confined to cabinet officers and diplomatic agents. 
All other removals must be for cause, and reported to 
the Senate. Cabinet officers were, after the manner 
of the English Constitution, entitled to a seat on 
the floor of Congress and the right to participate 
in debate. Protective tariff duties and govern- 
mental bounties were prohibited. A two-thirds 
vote was required for the admission of a State, with 
the Senate voting by States. Property in slaves 

126 



FORT SUMTER 127 

was expressly recognized and guaranteed, and the 
further importation of negro slaves from any other 
country than the slaveholding States and Terri- 
tories of the United States was prohibited. Con- 
gress was empowered to prevent the importation 
of slaves from any outside State or Territory.^ 

Alexander H. Stephens, Unionist Whig, who had 
been in recent correspondence with Lincoln, and 
who had exhausted every effort to prevent seces- 
sion in Georgia, was a member of the Congress. 
He paid a tribute to his associates in that assembly, 
in recording of them: "Upon the whole, this Con- 
gress taken all in all, is the ablest, soberest, most 
intelligent and conservative body I was ever in." ^ 

Of the provisional constitution, and that subse- 
quently adopted upon the permanent organization 
of the government, which did not differ materially 
from it, Stephens later said: 

The whole document negatives the idea, which so many 
have been endeavoring to put in the enduring form of 
history, that the Convention at Montgomery was nothing 
but a set of conspirators, whose object was the overthrow 
of the principles of the Constitution of the United States, 
and the creation of a great "slave-oligarchy," instead 
of the free institutions thereby secured and guaranteed. 
The work of the Montgomery Convention, with that of 

^ "Confederate Constitution," Bryce's Am. Commonwealth, I, p. 
653; Short History, pp. 65, 66. 

2 Johnston and Brown, Life of Stephens, p. 392; Dodd, Li/e, 
p. 217. 



128 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

the Convention for a Provisional Government, will ever 
remain not only as a monument of the wisdom, forecast 
and statesmanship of the men who constituted it, but 
an everlasting refutation of the charges which have been 
brought against them. These Constitutions, provisional 
and permanent, together show clearly that the only lead- 
ing object of their framers was to sustain, uphold and 
perpetuate the fundamental principles of the Constitu- 
tion of the United States.^ 

On February 9; 1861, the Congress elected Davis 
President and Stephens Vice-President, each of 
whom had used his most earnest efforts, though 
along different lines of political action, to continue 
and perpetuate the constitutional Union of the 
States. 

The political and economic movements of the 
preceding twenty-five or thirty years throughout 
the civilized world had been tremendous and por- 
tentous. The humanitarian anti-slavery develop- 
ment had been world-wide. England, France, 
and Denmark had taken action against what the 
American abolitionists denominated the "relic of 
mediaeval barbarism.*' Governments, societies, and 
individuals of intellectuality and power, at home 
and abroad, had given to the anti-slavery propa- 
ganda of New England and the central Western 
communities the stimulus of appeal to "the higher 
law," against which the constitutional argument of 

^ Short History, pp. 66, 67; Stephens, History, V. S., pp. 600, 601. 



FORT SUMTER 129 

written reservations and concessions, of checks 
and balances, were '^ scraps of paper/' 

Interwoven inextricably with the question of 
slavery in the Territories, with the proposition for 
the abolition of slavery throughout the Union, with 
the significance of cotton as a world-power, with 
the equilibrium of the States in a federal and anti- 
federal system, were the antagonisms of two peoples, 
dissimilar in occupations, in local institutions, in 
economic interests, and in social life and methods.^ 
How many and how diverse interests and influences 
dominated the crucial political movement of seces- 
sion is indicated in Doctor Seligman's observation: 

Had the Northern and Western States been subjected 
to the same climatic and economic conditions, there is 
little doubt that . . . they would have completely shared 
the moral views of their Southern brethren. Men are 
what conditions make them, and ethical ideas are not 
exempt from the same inexorable law of environment.^ 

Events moved with great rapidity in the late 
winter of 1860 and the early spring of 1861. The 
withdrawal of the Southern members of Congress 
left the Republicans in control of both Houses, and 
Kansas, over which the sections had struggled for 
years, was admitted as a free State. The Morrill 

1 Lyon G. Tyler, letter in the Virginia Gazette (Williamsburg, Va.), 
September 21, 1916. 

2 The Economic Interpretation of History, p. 128; Cotton, p. 229, 
note 2. 



130 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

Tariff of 1861, a protective measure; passed both 
Houses and became a law. "Its great object," 
says Doctor Alexander Johnston, "was the protec- 
tion of manufactures, revenue being a secondary 
consideration." ^ 

On February 4, 1861, the Peace Convention, 
organized upon the initiative of Virginia, and sug- 
gested and presided over by the venerable ex-Presi- 
dent John Tyler, assembled at Washington, in the 
hope of adjusting the sectional differences. Repre- 
sentatives were present during its sessions from 
twenty-one States, and Virginia recommended the 
adoption of the Crittenden Compromise in a slightly 
modified form. Massachusetts and Rhode Island 
appointed delegates, without instructions; but all 
the other Northern Republican States agreed in 
advance that they would not assent to the Vir- 
ginia proposition, and would stand on the platform 
that the Constitution "fairly construed and faith- 
fully obeyed" was sufficient, without amendments, 
for the needs of the country. Zachariah Chandler, 
senator from Michigan, wrote, February 11, from 
Washington to Governor Blair of his State : " Gover- 
nor Bingham and myself telegraphed you Saturday 
at the request of Massachusetts and New York, 
to send delegates to the Peace or Compromise Con- 



1 Am. Politics, pp. 195, 196. See Am. Hist. Rev., Oct., 1916, "The 
Influence of Manufactures upon Political Sentiment in U. S. from 
1820 to 1860." 



FORT SUMTER 131 

gress. They admit that we were right and that 
they were wrong; that no RepubHcan State should 
have sent delegates; but they are here, and cannot 
get away. Ohio, Indiana, Rhode Island are caving 
in, and there is danger of Illinois; and now they 
beg us, for God^s sake, to come to their rescue and 
save the RepubHcan party from rupture. The whole 
thing was gotten up against my judgment and ad- 
vice, and will end in thin smoke. Still, I hope as 
a matter of courtesy to some of our erring brethren, 
that you will send the delegates.^^ He added the 
postscript: "Some of the manufacturing States 
think that a fight would be awful. Without a little 
blood-letting this Union will not, in my estimation, 
be worth a rush." ^ 

There was slight spirit of conciliation among the 
members of the conference from the Northern 
States, and Chase, then senator from Ohio, spoke 
the sentiment of his party associates in declaring 
to the Southern delegates that the Northern States 
would never fulfil that part of the Constitution 
which required the return of fugitives from service. 
"The clause in the Constitution concerning this 
class of persons," he said, "is regarded by ahnost 
all men. North and South, as a stipulation for the 
surrender to their masters of slaves escaping into 
free States. The people of the free States, however, 

* Chittenden, Proceedings of the Peace Convention^ p. 468; Mun- 
ford, Virginians Attitude, pp. 253, 254. 



132 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

who believe that slaveholding is wrong, cannot and 
will not aid in reclamation; and the stipulation 
becomes therefore a dead letter." ^ 

The Peace Conference ended "in thin smoke/' 
and the "blood-letting" followed. Rhodes, writing 
of the gathering, says: "The historical significance 
of the Peace Convention consists in the evidence 
it affords of the attachment of the Border Slave 
States to the Union." ^ 

Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee were 
still in the Union, but with conventions in session, 
or in process of election, to meet developing cir- 
cumstances. In the Virginia convention the Union- 
ists had a strong majority, and the sentiment both 
in North Carolina and Tennessee was against seces- 
sion.^ 

Confederate commissioners, three in number, 
were sent by Davis from Montgomery to Wash- 
ington, to conduct negotiations looking toward a 
recognition of the Confederate States.^ Two of 
them were anti-secessionists, and the third a Breckin- 
ridge Democrat. Their dealings with the secretary 
were conducted through Judge Campbell, a Southern 
member of the supreme court. Lincoln authorized 
Seward "to give assurance through Judge Campbell 
that no provisioning or reinforcement [of Sumter] 

1 Stephens, History oj U. S., pp. 590, 591. 
^History, III, p. 307. 
3 Munford, Virginians Attitude, pp. 255 ff. 
* Stephens, History of U. S., p. 602. 



FORT SUMTER 133 

should be attempted without warning. Thus he 
secured or continued a sort of truce, irregular and 
informal, but practical/' ^ Seward promised the 
commissioners through Judge Campbell that "there 
should be no collision," and added, "if this whole 
matter is not satisfactorily settled within sixty days 
after I am seated in the saddle and hold the reins 
firmly in my hand, I will give you my head for a 
football/' 2 Campbell addressed Seward a letter, 
April 7, on the subject of his previous assurances, 
and the secretary replied: "Faith as to Sumter 
fully kept. Wait and see." In the meantime a 
fleet had put to sea from New York for the purpose 
of reinforcing and provisioning the fort, "peace- 
ably," if permitted, "otherwise by force." ^ 

Stanton, who had been a member of Buchanan's 
cabinet, wrote the ex-President on March 16, 1861: 

The Republicans are beginning to think that a mon- 
strous blunder was made in the tariff bill, and that it will 
cut off the trade of New York, build up New Orleans, 
and the Southern ports, and leave the government no 
revenue; they see before them the prospect of soon being 
without money and without credit. But with all this 
it is certain that Anderson will be withdrawn.^ 



1 Morse, Life of Lincoln (S. S.), I, p. 245. 

2 Coleman, Crittenden, II, p. 338; Tyler, Letters and Times, II, 
p. 633; C. F. Adams, Autobiography, pp. 105-7. 

3 Stephens, War between the States, II, p. 346; Tyler, Letters and 
Times, II, p. 635; Coleman, Crittenden, II, p. 338. 

* Tyler, Letters and Times, II, p. 636. 



134 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

In the early days of April, 1861, when the Vir- 
ginia convention had been in session for weeks, 
debating the question of secession, and making 
a new constitution for the commonwealth, with 
Union sentiment in absolute control, Seward sent 
a personal emissary on a confidential embassy to 
John Janney, president of the convention, Alex- 
ander H. H. Stuart, who had been Fillmore^s secre- 
tary of the interior, and other Union men, who were 
among its members. The message conveyed was 
that it was important for some one of them to see 
the President, but that the pubhc should not know. 
John B. Baldwin, a Union member, was selected to 
call at the White House. Lincoln accorded him a 
private interview, and Baldwin in a brief conver- 
sation convinced him of the desire of the border 
slave States to remain in the Union. The President 
said: "I ought to have known this sooner. Why 
did you not come here four days ago and tell me 
all this? You are too late !" Baldwin assured him 
that it was not too late, but that a simple proc- 
lamation that the Federal Government had no right 
to coerce sovereign States by force of arms, and that 
the purpose of the administration was one of con- 
ciliation, would not only effectually conclude the 
secession movement in the slave States which had 
not yet gone out, but would bring back into the 
Union those which had seceded, as had been the 
case with Rhode Island and North Carolina in 1790. 



FORT SUMTER 135 

The question of the Territories, urged Baldwin, had 
no such importance in the eyes of the border States 
as to drive them into secession, but coercion would 
be considered a casus helli. To this the President 
repHed: "But what am I to do in the meantime 
with those men at Montgomery ? Am I to let them 
go on?" "Until they can be peacefully brought 
back," was the reply. "And open Charleston as 
a port of entry, with their ten per cent tariff? 
What then would become of my tariff?" This last 
question Baldwin stated the President propounded 
with such emphasis as showed that it concluded 
the whole matter.^ 

In 1833 the Northern high-tariff men favored 
war with South Carolina rather than a reduction of 
the tariff rates. The Morrill Tariff of 1861 included 
rates ranging from fifty per cent to two hundred 
per cent, in face of impending war with all the 
Southern States. The Confederate Congress at 
Montgomery adopted a rival schedule, with rates 
as low as ten per cent and twenty per cent. The 
free trade of the English Cobdenites seemed im- 
minent in event of the success of the South. Europe 
was for free trade, and the seceding cotton States 
counted with apparent reason on the sentiment. 
This, perhaps, besides the successes of the South 



* Doctor R. L. Dabney, ** Narrative of Col. Baldwin's Interview," 
So. Hist. Soc. Papers, i, p. 443; Ibid., ix, p. 88; Tyler, Letters and 
Times, II, pp. 637, 638. 



136 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

in the field, had something to do with inspiring the 
speech of Gladstone at Newcastle, scarcely more 
than a year after the war began : 

There is no doubt that Jefferson Davis and other leaders 
of the South have made an army; they are making, it 
appears, a navy; and they have made what is more than 
either, — they have made a nation. . . . We may antic- 
ipate with certainty the success of the Southern States 
so far as regards their separation from the North. I can- 
not but beUeve that that event is as certain as any event 
yet future and contingent can be.* 

The European contment was impressed with the 
idea that cotton was king, and the lower South laid 
much stress upon it as the means of winning in- 
dependence. On the other hand, the loss of cotton 
and the cotton States to the Union, as a result of 
secession, meant to the manufacturing North a loss 
of political power and the contiguous presence of a 
low-tariff people, whose independent and sovereign 
States, though members of one central government, 
would constitute at the same time a social, eco- 
nomic, and political organization totally antagon- 
istic to its own. 

Viewed, therefore, in its ultunate aspects the 
war which ensued was a war on the part of one 
nation to subject the other to its control. And at 
this distance of time there can be little doubt that 
the action of the North in prosecuting the war was 

» C. F. Adams, Lije oj C. F. Adams (S. S.), p. 280; Cotton, p. 276. 



FORT SUMTER 137 

an infringement of the principle, set out in the Dec- 
laration of Independence, of government based on 
the consent of the governed. .^"By fighting a four 
years' war on equal terms with the powerful North, 
it, (the South) gave the best proof of its right to 
exist in the sun as an independent nation. After 
drawing in vain on his own population, and that 
of Europe to suppress the South, Lincoln resorted 
to forcible enlistments from the South's own pop- 
ulation to achieve his victory, confessing that with- 
out the negro troops the North would be compelled 
to abandon the War in three weeks." ^ 

On April 9 the Confederate commissioners ad- 
dressed Seward a note in which they said that the 
sending of the fleet to reinforce Sumter would be 
received as a "declaration of war against the Con- 
federate States." 

"From subsequent disclosures," writes Stephens, 
"it appears that it was the intention of Mr. Lincoln 
to withdraw the Federal forces from Fort Sumter 
at an early day, when assurance to that effect was 
given; but when this intention became known, in 
party circles, the governors of seven of the Northern 
States, which were under the control of the agitators, 
assembled in Washington and prevailed on him to 
change his policy." ^ 

^ Lyon G. Tyler, in William and Mary College Qiuirterly, xxvi, 
p. 13. 

2 History U. S., pp. 608, 609; Tyler, Letters and Times, II, p. 633; 
W. & M. Coll. Quarterly, xxiv, p. 75. 



138 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

After the fleet had sailed notice was given on 
•April 8, not to the Confederate commissioners, but 
to Pickens, the governor of South Carolina, of a 
change in the administration's poHcy in regard to 
the assurance which Seward had given the com- 
missioners. 

The expedition was expected to reach Charleston 
harbor on April 9. Learning that it had sailed, 
the Confederate Government instructed Beauregard, 
who was in command at the Carolina capital, to 
demand the evacuation of Sumter, and to proceed to 
reduce it, if Anderson refused to surrender. The 
refusal was made, and on the moiTiing of April 13 
the Confederate batteries opened fire on the fort. 
The bombardment continued for nearly thirty-four 
hours, when the fort took fire, and Anderson, after 
a gallant defense, was forced to jaeld. No blood 
was shed on either side. 

Greeley wrote of the event, that "whether the 
bombardment of Fort Sumter shall or shall not be 
justified by posterity, it is clear that the Confederacy 
had no alternative but its own dissolution. '* ^ 

Davis says of it: "After the assault was made 
by the hostile descent of the fleet, the reduction of 
Fort Sumter was a measure of defense rendered 
absolutely and immediately necessary." ^ 

Two days later Lincoln issued a call for seventy- 
five thousand troops to suppress "combinations too 

lAm. Conflict, I, p. 449. ^ ShoH Hist., p. 69. 



FORT SUMTER 139 

powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course 
of judicial proceedings, or by the powers vested 
in the marshals by law." ^ On April 17 the Vir- 
ginia Union Convention, which had been in session 
since February, adopted an ordinance of secession 
as the answer of the Commonwealth to proposed 
coercion; and turned over to the use of the Con- 
federate Government the much-needed military re- 
sources of the State, including thirty-six thousand 
miHtia and volunteers then under arms, some bat- 
teries and ships, and a good armory .2 The secession 
of Virginia was followed by that of North Carolina, 
Tennessee, and Arkansas. 

In the meantime, Davis, to whom his election 
as President had come as a surprise, and who would 
have preferred military service under the Con- 
federacy, set out from Briarfield to the seat of the 
new government at Montgomery. He wrote of his 
election, at a later date: 

I thought myself better adapted to command in the 
field, and Mississippi had given me the position which I 
preferred to any other,— the highest rank in her army. 
It was therefore that I afterward said, in an address de- 
livered in the Capitol, before the Legislature of the State, 
with reference to my election to the Presidency of the 
Confederacy, that the duty to which I was thus called 
was temporary, and that I expected to be soon with the 
army of Mississippi again.^ 

» Tyler, Letters and Times, II, p. 639. « /^^^ n p ^^^ 

' Memoir, II, p. 18. 



140 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

In his journey to Montgomery his train was met 
at all stopping-places by crowds, to whom he de- 
clared his belief that there would be a long and 
bloody war, and he advised them that it behooved 
every one to "put his house in order." He expressed 
this opinion, also, in private conversation with 
prominent men, who imagined that the withdrawal 
of the States would be peaceable, and that there 
would be no bloodshed. These speeches and con- 
versations were misrepresented in contemporary 
Northern newspapers, which stated that in them 
Davis invoked war and threatened devastation to 
the North.^ He was greeted at Montgomery by 
Yancey, who presented him to the assembled crowd 
with the announcement that "the man and the 
hour have met." 

On February 18 he was inaugurated, and deliv- 
ered an address in which he discussed the constitu- 
tional rights and obligations of the new government, 
and the questions of a tariff and of the respective 
interests of North and South in the exchange of 
commodities and products. 

"If a just perception of mutual interest," he said, 
"shall permit us peaceably to pursue our separate 
political career, my most earnest desire will have 
been fulfilled." 

He made no mention of slavery, and left his 
hearers under no illusion as to what position his 

1 Memoir, II, p. 21; Short Hist, p. 60; Dodd, Life, p. 222. 



FORT SUMTER 141 

government would take in the event of recourse 
to arms by the North. After asserting that there 
could be but little rivalry between '^ours, and any 
manufacturing or navigating community, such as 
the North-eastern States of the American Union/' 
and expressing the wish that their relations might 
be peaceful, he said: "But if this be denied to us, 
and the integrity of our territory and jurisdiction 
be assailed it will but remain for us, with firm re- 
solve, to appeal to arms and invoke the blessings 
of Providence on a just cause/' 

He advised the formation of an army and navy, 
and said that if war should occur, "there would 
be no considerable diminution in the production 
of the staples which have constituted our exports, 
and in which the commercial world has an interest 
scarcely less than our own/' 

He concluded the address with a characteristic 
peroration : 

It is joyous in the midst of perilous times to look around 
upon a people united in heart; where one purpose of high 
resolve animates and actuates the whole; where the sacri- 
fices to be made are not weighed in the balance against 
honor and right and liberty and equality. Obstacles 
may retard, they cannot long prevent the progress of a 
movement sanctified by its justice and sustained by a 
virtuous people. Reverently let us invoke the God of 
our fathers to guide and protect us in our efforts to per- 
petuate the principles, which by His blessing they were 
able to vindicate, establish, and transmit to their pos- 



142 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

terity, and with a continuance of His favor, ever gratefully 
acknowledged, we may hopefully look forward to success?, 
to peace, and to prosperity.^ 

The moderation of Davis^s inaugural and the 
knowledge of his former efforts for peace and con- 
ciliation caused adverse criticism of the new ad- 
ministration from the extreme men of the South. 
Mrs. Davis records that "a secession man said: 
' We see that he thinks we ought to assert our rights, 
but we began to fear that he had stayed too long 
up there with the Yankees'''; while Rhett charged 
in the Charleston Mercury that "Jefferson Davis 
will exert all his powers to reunite the Confederacy 
to the Empire." ^ 

1 Davis, Rise and Fall, I, pp. 232-6; Memoir, II, pp. 23-32; So. 
Hist. Soc. Papers, i, pp. 19-23. 

2 Dodd, Life, p. 221. 



CHAPTER XII 
WAR MEASURES 

The first Confederate cabinet was selected by Davis 
upon "considerations of public welfare."^ No one 
of its members was his close personal friend, and 
with two of them he had had no previous acquain- 
tance. Robert Toombs, of Georgia, who was first 
a Whig and later a " Compromise '^ Democrat, and 
whose lectures on slavery in the New England States 
had recently made a favorable impression in the 
North, was made secretary of state. Toombs later 
became one of Davis's bitterest political opponents 
and critics. The secretary of the treasury was C. 
G. Meminger, who had been a consistent opponent 
of extreme measures in the matter of slavery in 
the Territories, and opposed to both nullification 
and secession. Leroy P. Walker, from the Union 
section of Alabama, whom Davis appointed upon 
the recommendation of Clement C. Clay, after Clay 
had declined the position, was chosen as secretary 
of war. The Navy Department went to Stephen R. 
Mallory, who on the secession of Florida resigned 
from the United States Senate, where he had held 
the chairmanship of naval affairs. Judah P. Ben- 

1 Short History, II, p. 61. 
143 



144 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

jamin, a former Whig and later State-rights Demo- 
crat, became attorney-general.^ Benjamin continued 
in Davis's cabinet until the fall of the Confeder- 
acy, much of the time as secretary of state, and 
their personal and official relations during all this 
period were very close. John H. Reagan, of Texas, 
a conservative Democrat, was made postmaster- 
general, in succession to Henry T. Ellett, of Miss- 
issippi, who held the office about a week. 

There were incongruous elements in the cabinet, 
and it did not long continue as first constituted. 
Toombs, a man of great vigor of intellect and in- 
dependence of action, had been a candidate for the 
Confederate presidency. He remained one of Davis's 
official advisers only a few months, and then re- 
signed to become a brigadier-general in the field. 
Alexander H. Stephens considered Toombs well 
fitted to be secretary of war. When the suggestion 
was made to him, he wrote: ^'I would not be Mr. 
Davis's chief clerk. His Secretary of War can never 
be anything else." ^ 

Benjamin was the only member of the cabinet 
who believed with his chief that secession would 
be followed by war. Walker, the secretary of war, 
says that at the first meeting of the cabinet, Mr. 
Benjamin proposed that the government should buy 

* Bradford, Confederate Portraits, p. 143; Butler, Benjamin, pp. 
177, 178. 

2 Bradford, Confederate Portraits, p. 208, citing Pleasant A. Stovall, 
Robert Toombs, p. 242, 



WAR MEASURES 145 

as much cotton as it could hold, at least one hun- 
dred thousand bales, and ship it at once to England. 
"With the proceeds of part of it, he advised the 
immediate purchase of at least one hundred and 
fifty thousand stands of small arms and guns and 
mmiitions in corresponding amounts, — I forget the 
exact figures. The residue of the cotton was to be 
held as a basis for credit. For, said Benjamin, we 
are entering on a contest that must be long and 
costly. All the rest of us fairly ridiculed the idea 
of a serious war." ^ 

Benjamin's cotton basis of "preparedness" was 
not adopted; but Davis and his government at 
once began to make preparation. Captain Raphael 
Semmes, later of Alabama fame, was sent North 
to obtain arms, ammunition, and machinery; and 
Major Caleb Huse, who had been commandant 
of the Alabama State University, was despatched 
to Europe to make contracts for a supply of mili- 
tary material. Few of Semmes's purchases were 
dehvered, on account of the interference of the 
Northern civil authorities; and the ships and vessels 
which he had also been instructed to buy, were not 
found. Huse made some purchases abroad, but the 
European contracts were soon shut off by the federal 
blockade. 

The Southern railroads, insufficient in mileage 
and deficient in rolling-stock, were inadequate to 

^ Butler, Benjamin, p. 234. 



146 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

the effective transportation either of troops or sup- 
pHes. The arms, ammunition, and material received 
from Virginia constituted nearly the sole military- 
equipment in the South when the first encounter 
took place at Manassas in the following July. The 
armory at Harper's Ferry, where John Brown's 
raid had terminated in October, 1859, was the only 
arsenal at the time in the South. When the federal 
troops left Harper's Ferry, in 1861, they set fire to 
it. The fire was extinguished by the citizens, and 
a large part of its machinery and equipment was 
saved. This was subsequently sent to arsenals es- 
tabHshed at Richmond and Fayetteville, and fur- 
nished the means of war-supplies and repairs of a 
later period.^ 

The first bill of the Provisional Congress was one 
for the enlistment of troops for a period of sixty days. 
Davis desired the time to be enlarged to a term of 
years, and finally succeeded in getting it extended 
to twelve months, "unless sooner discharged." ^ 

Such arms and munitions as existed in the South 
were regarded as belonging to the States, and could 
be used by the general government only with their 
consent. The forces were organized under State 
laws, and had to be received with their officers thus 
appointed. The designation of general officers was 
committed to the Confederate Government. 

A law was enacted providing for the appointment 

^ Short History, p. 75. \Ibid., p. 77. 



WAR MEASURES 147 

to their relative rank in the Confederate army of 
officers who had resigned from the United States 
army. Under this statute Samuel Cooper became 
adjutant-general, L. P. Moore surgeon-general, 
Josiah Gorgas chief of ordnance, and L. B. Nor- 
throp commissary-general. The three highest gen- 
eral officers, after Virginia entered the Confederacy, 
named by Davis were Cooper, Albert Sidney Johns- 
ton, and Robert E. Lee, a designation which marks 
the inception of the differences between the Presi- 
dent and General Joseph E. Johnston, which began 
immediately after the battle of Manassas, and con- 
tinued to Johnston's surrender.^ 

The Provisional Congress adjourned in May, 
to meet again on the 20th of July at Richmond, 
and Davis soon afterward removed the executive 
departments and archives to the new capital. 

The Confederate forces at that time in Virginia 
were divided into three armies, occupying what 
were thought to be the most important positions 
in the State. Joseph E. Johnston's command was 
at Harper's Ferry, that of Beauregard at Manassas, 
covering the direct approach of any invading force 
which might move on Richmond from Washington, 
while the third command, under Huger and Ma- 
gruder, was on the peninsula lying between the 
York and James Rivers. 

* Short History, pp. 77, 78; Memoir, II, chapter XIV; Bradford, 
Confederate Portraits, pp. 10-17. 



148 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

The Union forces, gathered at Washington, 
crossed the Potomac, and on July 21, 1861, the 
battle of Manassas was fought, with disastrous 
results to the invading army, which, defeated and 
thrown into confusion, became a rout. 

Davis, in anticipation of the battle, had intended 
to be present on the field before the conflict began, 
but was detained in Richmond by manifold details 
of his office, to which he insisted on giving his per- 
sonal supervision. All orders, instructions, and 
plans were personally directed by him at this period, 
when his neuralgic malady confined him to a sick- 
room; and the council which determined the plan 
of battle was held in the President's bedchamber. 

On July 21 he hastened to Manassas, and ar- 
rived upon what appeared a scene of demoralization 
if not of defeat. But he beheld shortly afterward 
the overwhelming rout and complete demoraliza- 
tion of the Union forces, who retreated toward Wash- 
ington in great confusion. 

In conference with Beauregard and Johnston he 
discussed the feasibility of immediate pursuit and 
a march on Washington, and wrote a tentative order 
to General Bonham to prepare his forces for a move- 
ment on the federal capital. He was finally per- 
suaded that such an attempt would prove abortive, 
and the order was suppressed. 

His critics charged him with the responsibility 
of failing to follow up the victory at Manassas. 



WAR MEASURES 149 

To this his reply was: "I had in no way interfered 
with the plans of action of the officers in charge." 
The true reason that there was no advance on the 
federal capital was twofold. First, "in our con- 
dition," said General Johnston, "pursuit could not 
be thought of; for we were almost as much dis- 
organized by our victory as the Federals by their 
defeat. Next day, many, supposing the war was 
over, actually went home." ^ Again, as late as 
September, Johnston's guns were practically with- 
out ammunition, and he was hardly in position the 
night of July 21 to order an advance upon Wash- 
ington, with a view of forcing his way through the 
outlying defenses, and laying siege to the national 
capital.^ 

The defeat at Manassas inspired a renewal of 
the energies of the Federal Congress, then in extra 
session, to "preparedness" and action. Bills were 
passed to effectuate the blockade which Lincoln 
had declared in answer to Davis's proclamation in- 
viting the issue of letters of marque and reprisal 
against the commerce of the United States.^ In 
his declaration of blockade, which included all 
Southern ports from South Carolina to Texas, is- 
sued on April 19, 1861, he proclaimed that priva- 
teers acting under the pretended authority of the 



^ Swinton, Campaigns, p. 59. 

2 Wise, Long Arm of Lee, I, pp. 24, 76, 139. 

3 Rhodes, Hist., Ill, p. 364; Messages and Papers, vi, pp. 14, 15. 



150 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

Confederate letters of marque would be treated as 
pirates, and Davis retorted with the threat of re- 
taliation.^ \ / 

In addition to its bill to strengthen the blockade, f 
the Federal Congress took measures to provide 
money for putting down "the rebellion," authorized 
a call for five hundred thousand volunteers, de- 
nounced the penalties of treason against the people 
of the South and all their abettors and aiders in the 
North, authorized the suspension of the writ of /ha- 
beas corpus in certain parts of the country, provided 
for the confiscation of all private property including 
slaves employed against the Federal Government, 
and by the tariff act of August 5, 1861, increased 
the duties on imports.^ 

The blockade crippled and finally destroyed al- 
together the foreign commerce of the Confederacy, 
preventing the sale abroad of its chief commercial 
product, cotton, and the bringing in of supplies and 
materials essential to an efficient conduct of the war. 

In 1861 the South produced through its slave 
system two milHon four hundred thousand bales 
of cotton, the greater part of which, but for the 
blockade, would have gone to the mills of England 
and France, and would have furnished a great 
revenue. Of this, England actually received only 
about fifty thousand bales, and France a negligible 

1 Rhodes, Hist., Ill, p. 429, note. 
'^Johnston, Am. Politics, p. 200. 



WAR MEASURES 151 

quantity. In 1862 one of Davis's cabinet members 
spoke of "the almost total cessation of foreign com- 
merce for the last two years" as creating "a com- 
plete exhaustion of the supply of all articles of foreign 
growth and manufacture," and Lord John Russell 
declared that "the United States were enabled by 
the blockade to intercept and capture a great part 
of the warlike supplies which were destined to the 
Confederate States from Great Britain." ^ 

When Davis had said in his inaugural, "It is 
alike to our interest and that of all those to whom 
we would sell and from whom we would buy, that 
there should be the fewest practicable restrictions 
upon the interchange of commodities," he was speak- 
ing to England no less than to his constituents, in 
reminder of her dependence on the Southern staple, 
and was invoking her intervention against a blockade, 
which ensued more quickly than had been antici- 
pated by him. 2 

But he and his administration regarded the block- 
ade as a two-edged sword that would cut the knot 
of non-intervention with one of its edges. While 
it worked hardship in shutting out foreign impor- 
tations, it appealed to him and to his cabinet in 
its earlier stages as a measure which of itself must 
compel intervention. The grave industrial situation 



* Lothrop, Seward {S. S.), p. 270; Bernard, Neutrality of Great 
Britain, pp. 286-7. 
2 Cotton, p. 258. 



152 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

that immediately arose among the Lancashire mills, 
when Southern cotton could no longer be procured, 
gave the British Government such concern as seemed 
to make recognition a matter of necessity to preserve 
internal peace. William H. Russell, the war corre- 
spondent of the London Times, had written from 
Montgomery concerning the Southern leaders: 
"They firmly believe that the war will not last a 
year. . . . They believe in the irresistible power 
of cotton, in the natural alliance between manufac- 
turing England and France, and the cotton-pro- 
ducing slave States, and in the force of their simple 
tariff. '' Foreign recognition was looked forward 
to by the Confederate Government as a practically 
assured fact after the battle of Manassas, in which 
the resisting power of the South had been satis- 
factorily demonstrated.^ 

Visiting Charleston, after the blockade was well 
under way, Russell foimd the same faith in cotton 
as at Montgomery. A merchant pointing to the 
wharf laden with cotton-bales, said to him: "There's 
the key will open all our ports, and put us into John 
Buirs strong-box as well.'' And again the English- 
man writes: "Rhett is also persuaded that John 
Bull sits on a cotton-bale." ^ The constantly re- 
curring juxtaposition of the negro and the bale was 
a persistent assurance to the South of its tremendous 

1; Adams, Charles Francis Adams" (S. S.), pp. 161-3. 
2 Cotton, p. 259. 



WAR MEASURES 153 

weapon of mastery over the cotton-consuming coun- 
tries of Europe/ and the first series of ten-dollar 
Confederate treasury notes not inappropriately 
bore a vignette of the famiHar combination. 

The results of the blockade, which was enforced 
with extraordinary if not complete effectiveness, in 
view of the long line of Southern seacoast, illustrated 
the power of economic restraint in the conduct of 
war. The naval control of the Confederate Httoral 
by the North, which soon closed every Southern 
port except Wihnington and Charleston, developed 
as an incident of its continuance "blockade-run- 
ning," from Bermuda, Nassau in the Bahamas, and 
Cuba, to Wilmington, Charleston, Savannah, and 
Mobile, until at last even all of these ports were 
closed to the blockade-runners except those of the 
two Carolina towns.^ 

Blockade-running brought in a small supply of 
much-needed drugs and medicines, and was of some 
service in its ministrations to the beleaguered Con- 
federacy; but its good was not commensurate with 
its evil. Davis at a later date wrote of it: 

Complaints were rife through our country that the 
foreign commerce was almost exclusively in the hands of 
aliens; that our cotton, tobacco and naval stores were 
being drained from the States, and that we were receiving 
in return cargoes of liquors, wines and articles of luxury; 
that the imported goods, being held in few hands and in 

1 Brown, The Lower South, p. 129. 2 Rhodes, V, pp. 396, 397. 



154 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

limited quantities, were sold at prices so exorbitant that 
the blockade-runners, after purchasing fresh cargoes of 
cotton, still retained large sums of Confederate money, 
which they invested in gold for exportation and in foreign 
exchanges; and that the whole course of the trade had 
a direct tendency to impoverish our country and enfeeble 
our defence. Congress believed these complaints well- 
founded, and in that belief I fully concurred.^ ■ 

The general effect on the South of the battle of 
Manassas was to inspire the people with a belief 
that the war would be of brief duration. Davis 
himself was strong in the faith that the victory was 
one of great significance, and returning to Rich- 
mond from the battle-field, he addressed an im- 
mense audience in a speech in which he recounted 
some of the incidents of the conflict, and declared 
the result to be decisive, "if followed by energetic 
measures." ^ 

But the victory of the Confederates was followed 
by continued inactivity on the part of the Southern 
army, on account of its lack of military supplies 
and ammimition. The foreign markets for the 
products of the South were shut off by the blockade; 
the subsequently efficient armories and arsenals 
were not yet under way. The Confederate paper 
currency soon drove into hiding the local gold and 
silver of the country, and prices of commodities 

1 June 10, 1864; Dec. 20, 1864; 0. R. Series IV, vol. Ill, pp. 553, 
949; Rhodes, Hist. U. S., V, p. 405. 

2 Alfriend, Life, p. 307. 



WAR MEASURES 155 

began to rise. The struggle which had one of its 
deepest roots in sectional economic antagonisms 
was already predestined to a conclusion in which 
economic exhaustion was to play its effective part. 
Davis, with a prevision of what lay ahead of his 
section, had advised his people in 1849 to "get to- 
gether and build manufactories, enter upon indus- 
trial pursuits, and prepare for our own self-sus- 
tenance." ^ But in the intervening decade there 
had been no organization of the South^s powers of 
resistance, for the obvious reason that manufac- 
turing was incompatible with its social, political, 
and economic conditions. Few factories had been 
built where cotton-raising was more profitable, and 
industrial pursuits had continued neglected under 
a system of labor which was not adapted to them. 
The "irrepressible conflict," that had been ap- 
proaching since nuUification in 1832, found the 
South still cultivating its great staple in 1861. The 
spectacular victory of one untrained army over 
another untrained army at Manassas in July of 
that year proved of ultimate inconsequence in the 
face of the Federal blockade, which] demonstrated 
the effective operation of a power well equipped 
with naval resources against another power totally 
destitute of naval equipment. ^ 
The Confederate administration continued to 

1 Dodd, Life, p. 123. 

2 Soley, The Blockade and the Cruisers, pp. 241-3. 



156 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

look beyond the blockade to European intervention 
with the knowledge that the South alone could 
furnish England and France their needed cotton, 
and in reliance on the assurance which it had given 
the world that no tariff except a revenue tariff would 
ever be levied by the South. ^ 

The effectiveness of the blockade emphasized 
the fact that all tariffs fail in time of war, and that 
as between two countries of equal wealth war varies 
with the disparity between their navies. ^ For three 
decades prior to 1861 the South had been relatively 
the most prosperous and wealthiest section of the 
Union.3 But the South had no navy.^ 

^ Wm. E. Dodd, Economic Influence of the Tariff in the South, 
S. B. N., V, p. 493. 

2 Admiral Bradley A. Fiske, U. S. N., "What the Visit of the U-53 
portends to the U. S,," New York Times Magazine, Oct. 15, 1916. 

^ Real and Personal Property Valves in the Antebellum South, S. 
B. N., V, p. 421. 

*Soley, The Blockade and the Cruisers, p. 1. 



CHAPTER XIII 

CONFEDERATE DIPLOMACY AND THE COTTON 
FAMINE 

Soon after his inauguration at Montgomery, the 
President sent three commissioners to Europe, with 
William L. Yancey at their head. Davis, whose 
knowledge of foreign countries was limited by the 
extent of his reading and studies, possessed a simple 
theory of foreign policy. It was that cotton was 
to be a dominating factor in all diplomatic dealings 
with England, to which country and to France the 
rest of Europe seemed disposed to leave the deter- 
mination of the Old World^s attitude toward the 
struggle that had arisen in the New. 

Schwab says in his book. The Confederate States 
of America, that the sentiment prevailed in the 
Provisional Congress at Montgomery that a stoppage 
of the cotton supply to the commercial nations of 
the world, especially the North and Great Britain, 
would bring them to terms, and an embargo on 
cotton was regarded with favor. ^ 

Hammond, an expert on the subject, quotes De 
Bow, the Southern war-time economist, as saying 

1 J. C. Schwab, The Confederate States of America, p. 250; Cotton, 
p. 258. 

157 



158 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

of the staple: "To the slave-holding States it is 
the great source of their power and their wealth 
and the main security for their peculiar institutions. 
Let us teach our children to hold the cotton plant 
in one hand and a sword in the other, ever ready 
to defend it as the source of commercial power 
abroad, and through that, of independence at 
home." Theodore Price and Hammond are quoted 
by Doctor Scherer as asserting that but for the re- 
liance placed on cotton by the statesmen of the 
far South, "the War would probably have not been 
fought." This, however, is not a demonstrable 
conclusion. Without cotton, the war might have 
been delayed; but the differences between the sec- 
tions in which economic, social, and constitutional 
relations had all played their parts, would un- 
doubtedly have brought on a conflict, that from 
the beginning was irrepressible.^ 

Within a few weeks after the war began, cotton 
doubled in price. The Confederate Congress put 
a discriminating tax on its production, and a proposi- 
tion widely discussed was one of the expediency of 
the government destroying the cotton in the South, 
and of notifying England that recognition of the 
Confederacy was a prerequisite to the planting of 
future crops.2 "The President and his advisers," 



1 Cotton, pp. 259, 260; Hammond, The Cotton Industry, pp. 64, 
257; The Outlook, N. Y., March 28, 1914, p. 720. 

2 Adams, Adams {S. S.), p. 163. 



CONFEDERATE DIPLOMACY 159 

writes Mrs. Davis in the Memoir, '' looked to the 
stringency of the English cotton market and the 
supervision of the manufactories, to send up a 
ground-swell from the EngHsh operatives that would 
compel recognition." ^ 

On May 1 Lord John Russell, who was informed 
of the proposed blockade of the Southern seaports, 
sent for the United States minister, Dallas, and 
informed him of the arrival of the Confederate com- 
missioners, giving him to understand that he would 
see them "unofficially." He also informed Dallas 
that England and France would act together on 
the question of recognizing the Confederacy. The 
next day Lord John announced in the House of 
Commons, having learned from Dallas of the coming 
of his successor, Charles Francis Adams, that the 
policy of the British Government would be "to 
avoid taking any part in the lamentable contest 
now raging in the American States." "We have 
not been involved in any way in that contest," he 
said, "by any act or giving advice in the matter, 
and, for God^s sake, let us if possible keep out of 
it." 

He received Yancey and his associates "unof- 
ficially," through the offices of W. H. Gregory, an 
Irish member of Parliament, who was a Southern 
sympathizer. The interview seems to have been 
productive of results, for a few days later the govern- 

* Adams, Adams {S. S.), p. 162. 



160 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

ment stated to the House of Commons that it had 
been determined to concede belHgerent rights to 
the Confederacy. On May 11 Downing Street was 
officially informed of the Federal blockade proclama- 
tion, and of Secretary Seward's circular to the for- 
eign ministers of the United States in relation to 
privateers against Northern commerce. "The 
Queen's Proclamation of Neutrality" followed, 
and a few days later Adams arrived at Queenstown.^ 
The belligerent rights of the Confederacy had been 
recognized by the British Government in advance 
of his arrival. 

Of "The Queen's Proclamation," the younger 
Adams, in his biography of his father, asserts that 
whether it was justifiable or not, "it certainly could 
not have been deferred later than immediately after 
the arrival of the news of the disaster of Bull Run, 
shortly before the close of the following July; and, 
if then considered and conceded, it might well have 
carried with it a full recognition of the Confederacy. 
As it was, the partial and ill-considered concession 
proved final; and, as matter of fact, precluded the 
more important ulterior step." 

Seward at this time had already developed his 
extraordinary sovereign panacea for concluding 
hostilities between the North and South, and re- 
storing the Union. It was to inaugurate a foreign 
war, whose extent and end were indefinite. He 

1 Adams, Adams {S. S.), p. 171. 



CONFEDERATE DIPLOMACY 161 

proposed in a memorandum filed with the Presi- 
dent, April 1, 1861, to "change the question before 
the pubHc from one upon slavery, or about slaver}^, 
for a question upon union or disunion/^ He wanted 
"explanations from Great Britain and Russia/' 
He suggested sending agents into Canada, Mexico, 
and Central America, "to rouse a vigorous con- 
tinental spirit of independence on this continent 
against Continental intervention. And if satis- 
factory explanations are not received from Spain and 
France, (he) would convene Congress and declare 
war against them." He believed that the South 
was not in earnest, and he had told Russell, of the 
Times, that if a majority of the people in the se- 
ceded States desired secession, he would let them 
have it, but that he could not believe in anything 
so monstrous. Russell wrote to the Times: "As- 
suredly Mr. Seward can not know anything of the 
South, or he would not be so confident that all would 
blow over.'^^ 

After the arrival of Adams in England, the com- 
missioners were not again received by Lord Rus- 
sell, either officially or unofficially. Mrs. Davis 
writes: "The astute and watchful ambassador of 
the United States had thus far forestalled every 
effort ... by presenting Mr. Seward's ex-parte 
statements of the causes, conduct, and prospect 

» Adams, Adams {S. S.), pp. 180, 186; Morse, Lincoln (S. S.), I, 
p. 277. 



162 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

of an early termination of the War. Mr. Seward 
predicted the War would end in thirty days." ^ 

In September the Confederate commissioners 
were superseded by James M. Mason. Yancey 
returned home, Rost was appointed commissioner 
to Spain, Mann to Belgium, and John Slidell was 
sent over with Mason as the Confederacy's emissary 
to France. 

On October 12, 1861, Mason and Slidell left 
Charleston on a steamer chartered by the Con- 
federate Government for Nassau, in the Bahamas, 
and not finding there the English ship which they 
had expected, they boarded a small Spanish war- 
vessel, and landed at Cardenas in Cuba on October 
18, under the escort of a Spanish man-of-war. 
Thence they went to Havana. Leaving Havana, 
November 7, on board a British mail-steamer, the 
Trent, bound for England, they were overhauled 
the next day by the United States ship San Jacinto j 
under the command of Captain Wilkes. He took 
them aboard his vessel, carried them North and 
delivered them to the Federal authorities, by whom 
they were incarcerated in Fort Warren, near Boston. 
Here they were detained until January 1, 1862, 
when they were released upon the demand of the 
British Government, and were sent to England on 
a British ship.^ 

1 Memoir, II, pp. 331, 332; Adams, Adams {S. S.), p. 198. 

2 Mason, Public Life of James M. Mason, pp. 204-8, 210. 



CONFEDERATE DIPLOMACY 163 

The ^^ Trent affair '^ excited world-wide attention 
and interest as involving important questions of 
international law, and grave consequences to the 
warring sections in America. On December 1, 1861, 
the United States House of Representatives, in 
pursuance of the retaliatory policies of the two con- 
tending governments, adopted a resolution to hold 
Mason to answer for the life of a Federal officer 
then detained in the South as a hostage for a Con- 
federate privateer, who had been tried and con- 
victed of piracy in the Federal court at Philadelphia; 
and a like resolution was adopted in regard to SHdell/ 
The elation indicated by the Northern newspapers 
over the capture of the commissioners caused a 
wide-spread belief in the South that the blunder of 
Captain Wilkes would immediately accomplish more 
in the way of causing British intervention than the 
diplomacy of Mason might have hoped for from 
its most successful ultimate issue. The episode 
betokened war between the United States and Great 
Britain, and this would have been its result but 
for the action of the Federal Government. 

The capture of the commissioners was altogether 
unjustifiable, and in clear violation of the principles 
of international law for which the United States 
had contended since the war of 1812 with Great 
Britain; and Seward's unwilling accession to Eng- 
land's demand for the immediate and unconditional 

» Mason, Masm, pp. 231, 232. 



164 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

surrender of Mason and Slidell averted the other- 
wise inevitable consequence. 

But there was no consensus between the countries 
as to the legal ground on which the surrender was 
made. Great Britain demanded the release on the 
ground that a neutral vessel could not be prevented 
from carrying diplomatic agents sent by the enemy 
to neutrals, while the United States Government 
took the position that their removal from the neu- 
tral vessel without bringing her before a prize-court 
was not justifiable under international law.^ 

The blockade, now in full swing, was not only 
accomplishing its purpose of creating economic 
want in the beleaguered Confederacy by excluding 
all imports from abroad, but it was having a disas- 
trous effect upon the industrial life of England and 
of France. In May, 1862, its results were visible 
in the distress of the English manufacturing cities 
of Lancashire; and its effectiveness, against which 
Davis continued to protest, was indicated in the 
cotton quotations of the English market. During 
the preceding six months only eleven thousand five 
hundred bales had been received from the Southern 
States, while in the corresponding period of 1860- 
61 the importations had been one million five hun- 
dred thousand bales. One-half of the spindles of 

* Professor L. F. L, Oppenheim, International Law, cited N. Y. 
Times, November 28, 1916; Mason, Mason, pp. 209-246; Adams, 
Adams (S. S.), p. 212; Davis, Short Hist., pp. 111-112. 



CONFEDEKATE DIPLOMACY 165 

Lancashire were idle; the loss of wages was im- 
mense; and the British newspapers contained many- 
accounts of cases of destitution. Upon the situation 
seemed to hang alike the fate of the American Union 
and that of the Southern Confederacy. Like con- 
ditions in less degree existed in France, and con- 
tinued in both countries until after the end of the 
year 1862.^ 

Next to England, France suffered most from the Famine; 
consuming as she did 240,000,000 pounds annually, as 
against a thousand millions in England and 364,000,000 
in America. Practically all of the French supply was 
American. When this was suddenly cut off, 300,000 people 
in one district were made absolutely destitute, subsisting 
according to report, "by roaming at night from house 
to house, and demanding rather than asking alms," while 
at Rouen, out of 50,000 operatives, 30,000 were "laid 
off," and in the surrounding country only one-fifth of 
the handweavers had work,^ 

Relief ensued, after the close of 1862, as a con- 
sequence of the method which the Federal Govern- 
ment adopted of continuing the blockade. Mili- 
tary and naval expeditions invaded Southern ports 
where cotton and other valuable products were 
stored, or from which the territories of their produc- 
tion were accessible. New Orleans, Beaufort, and 
Port Royal were occupied by Federal forces, and 

1 Adams, Adams (S. S.), pp. 266-271, 276; Cotton, pp. 261, 262. 

2 Cotton, p. 271. 



166 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

were officially declared by the United States Govern- 
ment to be open for trade. Licenses for trading 
with these ports were granted to foreign vessels 
by Federal consuls, and to coastwise vessels by the 
Treasury Department, and the blockade in this 
respect was relaxed as to the captured ports, ex- 
cept in regard to '^persons, property, and informa- 
tion contraband of war^'; while circulars were ad- 
dressed to the foreign ministers at Washington, 
announcing the reopening of communication with 
all conquered Southern locahties.^ 

Mason's mission in behalf of British intervention 
seemed at times almost on the verge of success, but 
was never successful. Slidell, however, in France, 
came so near accompHshing his purpose of winning 
over Napoleon the Third, that intervention, through 
him, on the part of both England and France, at 
one time appeared to be immediately in sight. The 
Confederate commissioner to France in the summer 
of 1862 offered to the French Emperor one hundred 
thousand bales of cotton, worth in Europe at that 
time twelve and a half million dollars, upon the con- 
dition that he would send his men-of-war over to 
America and break the blockade. Napoleon de- 
cided to request Russia and England to unite with 
France in proposing ^^ mediation.'' "My own pref- 
erence," he said to Slidell, '^is for a proposition of 
an armistice of six months; this would put a stop 

1 Short History, p. 300. 



CONFEDERATE DIPLOMACY 167 

to the effusion of blood, and hostilities would prob- 
ably never be resumed. We can urge it on the high 
grounds of humanity and the interest of the whole 
civilized world; if it be refused by the North, it 
will afford good reason for recognition, and per- 
haps for more active intervention." ^ 

While there were many men of position and 
power, and this was largely the case among the 
English nobility and gentry, who sympathized with 
the South, a deep feeling in favor of the Union ex- 
isted among the middle and lower classes, influenced 
by anti-slavery sentiment. In September, 1862, 
when the stress of the cotton-famine was greatest, 
Lord Palmerston, the British prime minister, wrote 
to Earl Russell, his foreign secretary, suggesting 
a joint offer by Great Britain and France of the 
"good offices" of the two countries toward media- 
tion; and Russell agreed that "the time is come for 
mediation to the United States Government, with 
a view to the recognition of the independence of 
the Confederates. I agree further," he added, "that 
in case of failure, we ought ourselves, to recognize 
the Southern States as an independent State. "^ 
But the pressure of the cotton-famine began to lift 
with the exportation of cotton from the captured 



^ Scherer, Cotton, p. 272, citing Rhodes, History, IV, p. 346, and 
SlideU's Account in Proceedings Mass. Hist. Soc, May, 1914, p. 
379. 

2 Adams, Adams {S. S.), pp. 281, 282. 



168 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

ports. Thereafter the efforts of the Confederate 
commissioners, both in England and France, though 
persistently continued, were without definite ac- 
complishment. 

Doctor Scherer quotes the German political econ- 
omist ^^Nauticus," in the Year-Book for 1900, on the 
effect of the Federal blockade upon the conflict be- 
tween the North and the South. "^The blockade 
of the South,' says this able authority, indorsing 
Admiral Porter, S*. e., the sea-power of the North, 
contributed more to the downfall of the South 
than all other mihtary operations put together. 
That is to say, the South, with its revenues, was' 
wholly dependent on freedom of export for its land 
products, such as cotton, sugar, tobacco, etc.; and 
its war supplies, besides machinery, wheat, peas, 
and potatoes, it had to obtain from outside. Through 
the gradually expanded blockade, on all the coasts 
of the South (roundly, 3,000 sea-miles in length), 
which was vigorously carried out by means of 313 
steamers and 105 sailing vessels, the sea-traffic of 
the South was as good as wholly cut off; at all 
events, the blockade sufficed more and more to 
break altogether the power of resistance of the brave 
Southern army. Want and misery everywhere 
was the frightful work of the blockade, which pre- 
pared and accomplished the defeat of the South."' ^ 

^ Cotton, pp. 262, 263, and note (5) citing Beitrage zur Floiten- 
Novelle, von Nauticus, Berlin, 1900, pp. 113, 114. 



CONFEDERATE DIPLOMACY 169 

It was naturally regarded by the Confederate 
Government as important that no effort should be 
spared to retaliate against the blockade, which, 
whatever its technical effectiveness, was serving 
its purpose of keeping out the importation of Euro- 
pean goods and of preventing the exportation of 
the South's great staple crop for the benefit of the 
Confederacy. 

In January, 1863, Slidell took advantage of the 
situation that had arisen out of the cotton-famine 
to persuade Napoleon to offer, on his own motion 
and alone, his services to the United States as media- 
tor with the Confederacy. Lincoln refused the pro- 
posal, and Slidell and the French Emperor again 
turned to England for co-operation.^ 

In the meantime, Slidell, with the assistance of 
Mason in London, succeeded in negotiating the 
Confederate "Foreign Cotton Loan" through the 
French banking-house of Erlanger. This loan was 
for the sum of fifteen million dollars, and was three 
times oversubscribed in London within two days 
after the bonds came on the market, and the total 
subscription amounted to five times the face value 
of the loan. The proceeds of the Foreign Cotton 
Loan bonds, which became worthless upon the col- 
lapse of the Confederacy, furnished the main specie 
revenue of the Southern Government; and with 

1 Cotton, p. 283, citing Rhodes, IV, p. 348; Lothrop, Seward (5. 5.), 
pp. 235, 236. 



170 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

them were purchased the Confederate cruisers, with 
which for a time formidable retaliation was made 
upon the commerce of the blockading North. 

Slidell's continued efforts brought two members 
of ParHament, Lindsay and Roebuck, who were 
Southern sympathizers, to Paris, where they were 
entertained by the Emperor at the Tuileries, and 
returned to England with authority, as Roebuck 
claimed, to say to the British Government that his 
feeling ^'was stronger than ever in favor of recogniz- 
ing the South. '^ Roebuck delivered the message in 
an ill-timed speech in Parliament, in replying to 
which the Union sympathizer, John Bright, "shook 
him as a terrier shakes a rat.'* On July 13, 1863, 
Roebuck withdrew his motion for recognition; and 
in a few days news of Gettysburg and Vicksburg 
reached England, and ended the whole interven- 
tion business.^ 

^Cotton, pp. 285-9, citing Trevelyan's Life oj Bright, p. 323; 
Brown, Lower South, p. 165. 



CHAPTER XIV 
SEA-POWER AND THE CRUISERS 

The Confederacy had started out in 1861 with its 
adversary excelling it greatly in two of the three 
sources of superiority in war, sea-power and man- 
power. In the third; the resource of wealth, the 
South was on a nearer equality, but deficient in 
ability to utilize its possessions. 

In June, 1861, Davis sent to England, as agent 
of the Confederate States, for the purpose of ob- 
taining ships and ammunitions. Captain James D. 
Bulloch, formerly an officer of the United States 
navy, of whom the Confederate President after- 
ward wrote, that he was '^of high ability as a sea- 
man, and of an integrity which stood the test under 
which a less stern character might have given way,'' 
in his scrupulous handling and disbursement of 
miUions of dollars, without the necessity of account- 
ing to any one.^ 

The Confederate naval agent, who had gone direct 
to Liverpool from Montgomery, displayed great 
energy and achieved marked success in his opera- 
tions. Within a month after his arrival he had 
caused to be laid down the keel of the cruiser Oreto, 

^ Short History, p. 241. 
171 



172 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

afterward famous as the Florida, and in the fol- 
lowing month he closed a contract with the Lairds, 
a Liverpool firm of ship-builders, for the construc- 
tion of the cruiser Alabama, or ^^290/' as the vessel 
was designated in the shipyards at Birkenhead, 
which was launched on May 15, 1862. 

Raphael Semmes, formerly of the United States 
navy, had commanded in the first year of the war 
the Confederacy's first cruiser, the Sumter, a small 
propeller steamer of five hundred tons, equipped 
with an 8-inch gun and four light 32-pounders, 
and had gone out of New Orleans, passing the 
blockading vessels Brooklyn and Powhatan at the 
mouth of the river in April, 1861. During her cruise 
of some eight months she captured seventeen prizes; 
and while several of them were released in Cuban 
ports by order of the captain-general, her career 
created such alarm that Northern ships were, to 
a large extent, put under foreign flags, and the carry- 
ing trade, in which the United States stood second 
only to Great Britain, rapidly passed into other 
hands. ^ 

When the Alabama, whose purpose as a Con- 
federate commerce-destroyer was well understood 
in England, was launched and ready for sea, Bul- 
loch summoned Semmes. Strenuous efforts had 
been made by the United States minister and by 

1 Soley, The Blockade and the Cruisers, pp. 172-6; Short History, 
p. 240. 



SEA-POWER AND THE CRUISERS 173 

the consul at Liverpool to prevent the vessel leav- 
ing port; but the British Foreign Enlistment Act 
had been examined for Bulloch by counsel, who ad- 
vised that there was nothing in the English law 
which made it illegal to build a war-ship as one oper- 
ation, or prevented the purchase of arms and equip- 
ment for it as another. This construction of the 
act was subsequently confirmed by the law-officers 
of the crown, and was laid down for the guidance 
of juries by the Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer.^ 

On July 28, 1862, the ^'290^^ went down the Mer- 
sey, ostensibly on a trial trip, to Point Lynas, on 
the coast of Anglesea, about fifty miles from Liver- 
pool. Here she remained in EngHsh waters for two 
days, and on the morning of the 31st she got under 
way,' and standing northward, rounded the northern 
coast of Ireland, and passing out into the Atlantic, 
sought the Azores. She was unarmed, and only 
sufficiently equipped to reach her destination. 
Semmes and Bulloch followed her in the steamer 
Bahama, and found her at her destination in the 
Azores, at the Bay of Praya, whither a sailing vessel 
had been previously despatched with her batteries, 
ammunition, and stores.^ 

On August 24, 1862, she steamed out of her harbor 
in the Azores, armed and equipped, and when more 



^ Adams, Adams (S. S.), pp. 307, 308; The Blockade and the 
Cruisers, pp. 190, 191. 

2 The Blockade and the Cruisers, p. 192. 



174 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

than a marine league from the shore, Semmes read 
the commission from Davis appointing him cap- 
tain, and the order of the Confederate secretary of 
the navy assigning him to the command of the 
Alabama f which was the name then given to the 
vessel. The sailors who had come on the miarmed 
"290'^ were given their choice of enhstment in the 
crew of the new cruiser or of being paid off, with a 
free passage to Liverpool. Eighty of the men who 
had reached the Azores in the several vessels con- 
nected with the enterprise joined the crew of the 
Alabama, and with a full complement of officers, 
and an armament of six 32-pounders in broadsides, 
and pivot guns amidships, one a smooth-bore 8-inch- 
shell gun, and the other a 100-poimd-rifle Blakeley, 
she set out on her career of destruction to Federal 
commerce. 

"Among all the developments of naval warfare 
that were brought about between 1861 and 1865," 
writes Professor Soley, "the art of commerce de- 
stroying, as systematized and apphed by Semmes, 
will not be reckoned the least important. In saying 
this, it must be understood that reference is made, 
not to its ethical, but to its military aspect. As a 
mode of carrying on hostilities, it is neither chival- 
rous nor romantic, nor is it that which a naval officer 
of the highest type would perhaps most desire to 
engage in; but it fulffis, in an extraordinary degree, 
the main object of modern war, that of crippling 



SEA-POWER AND THE CRUISERS 175 

an adversary. . . . The name of the Alabama, 
hke that of the Monitor, has become a generic 
term; and future Alabamas will regard the cruise of 
Semmes's vessel as the starting-point in all their 
operations." ^ 

In the simimer of 1864, after sailing into every 
sea where a blow at American foreign trade could 
be struck, she came back from the Indian Ocean, 
around Good Hope, and ran north in the Atlantic 
to the 30th parallel, where so many captures had 
been previously made by her. Of the ship at this 
date, Semmes wrote: ^^The poor old Alabama was 
not now what she had been then. She was like the 
wearied fox-hound limping back after a long chase, 
footsore, and longing for quiet repose. '^ She had 
captiu-ed in her career sixty-three vessels, including 
a gunboat, the Hatteras, sunk in action; had re- 
leased nine ships under ransom-bond, and had 
paroled all the prisoners that she had taken. As 
all neutral ports were closed against her prizes, those 
ships which could not be released under ransom- 
bond were necessarily destroyed at sea. ''The 
prize-court of the Confederacy, '^ says Soley, ''now 
sat in Semmes's cabin, and all questions of law and 
fact were settled by the Captain's decision." ^ 

On the morning of June 11, 1864, the Alabama 
entered the harbor of Cherbourg, France. On June 

* The Blockade and the Cruisers, pp. 221, 222. 
2 Adams, Adams {S. S.), p. 318, 



176 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

19 she left the harbor to engage the Kearsarge, 
which lay off the breakwater. The result of the 
battle, in which the two ships were nearly evenly 
matched in guns, crew, and tonnage, but in which 
the United States vessel had the material advantage 
of having its engines protected by chain-plating, 
fifty feet long by six feet deep, was the sinking of 
the Alabama by the Kearsarge, after a fight lasting 
an hour and ten minutes. 

The English yacht Deerhound had followed the 
Alabama out of the harbor, and was now hailed by 
the Kearsarge to assist in bringing off the crew of 
the sinking Alabama, The Deerhound complied with 
the request, and picked up forty-two persons, among 
whom were Semmes and fourteen of his officers. 
With these she steamed across the English Channel 
to Southampton. 

'^It is common to speak of the Alabama and the 
other Confederate cruisers as privateers," says 
Soley. ^^It is hard to find a suitable designation 
for them, but privateers they certainly were not. 
The essence of a privateer lies in its private owner- 
ship; its officers are persons in private employ- 
ment; and the authority under which it acts is a 
letter-of-marque. To call the cruisers pirates, is 
merely to make use of invective. Most of them 
answered all the legal requirements of ships-of- 
war; they were owned by the Government, and 
they were commanded by naval officers acting under 



SEA-POWER AND THE CRUISERS 177 

a genuine commission. Some of them were put in 
commission at sea or in foreign waters, and never 
saw the country of their adoption; but their com- 
mission could not thereby be invahdated. There 
is no rule of law which prescribes the place where 
a Government shall commission its ships, or which 
requires the ceremony to take place, like the ses- 
sions of prize-courts, within the belligerent terri- 
tory/^ 1 

Other ships of the Confederate service, built in 
England, and regularly commissioned by the Con- 
federate Government, were the subjects of diplo- 
matic correspondence between the United States 
and Great Britain, as the Alabama had been. Bul- 
loch's energy and ability also sent out the Oreto, 
rechristened the Florida, under Captain Maffitt, 
which in its career captured about fifty-five vessels, 
the Georgia, fitted out on the coast of France, and 
commanded by Maury,^ and the Tallahassee, com- 
manded by J. Taylor Wood.^ 

In July, 1864, another ship that had come to 
Wilmington, "running the blockade,^' was pur- 
chased by the Confederate Navy Department, 
christened Chickamauga, and put imder the com- 
mand of Commander John Wilkinson.* 



1 The Blockade and the Cruisers, pp. 206-213, 224. 
^Ihid., pp. 183-4, 214, 215. 

3 The Blockade and the Cruisers, pp. 227-9; Short History, p. 
255. 

* Short History, p. 255. 



178 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

Other commerce-destroyers were building, under 
Bulloch's influence, at the Birkenhead yards; and 
the British Foreign Office was confronted with the 
demand from the United States that the damage 
done by those already constructed should be paid 
for by the British Government. The correspondence 
which ensued between the two governments was 
published in the London papers of March, 1863, 
and the great mercantile houses of the English 
metropolis began to make preparation for the war 
between the two countries that now seemed to be 
inaminent. 

The prospective breaking of the blockade by 
means of the Confederate cruisers gave serious con- 
cern to the American minister at London and to 
his government at home. 

Adams anticipated that war would grow out of 
the threatening conditions of the situation, and he 
wrote home: "I shall do my best to avert it." In 
March, 1863, Mallory, the Confederate secretary 
of the navy, alluding to the cruisers then in course 
of construction in England, wrote: "Our early 
possession of these ships, in a condition of service, 
is an object of such paramount importance to our 
country that no effort, no sacrifice, must be spared 
to accompHsh it. Whatever may be the conditions 
of placing them at our command will be promptly 
met." Semmes had written to Bulloch from Bahia, 
in the preceding May, about the Federal demand 



SEA-POWER AND THE CRUISERS 179 

on Britain for compensation on account of the 
damage to commerce by his own ship: "That 'little 
bill' which the Yankees threaten to present to our 
Uncle John Bull for the depredations of the Alabama, 
is growing apace, and already reaches $3,100,000." ^ 
A year later the British Government, in anticipa- 
tion of the failure of the Confederacy, made it plain 
that its detention of the two undelivered ships, or 
''Laird Rams," as they were called, was final. Mal- 
lory referred to this action in a letter to Bulloch as 
"a great national misfortune," and Davis in turn 
declared that if the Confederate Government had 
been successful in getting those vessels to sea, "it 
would have swept from the ocean the commerce 
of the United States, (and) would have raised the 
blockade of at least some of our ports." ^ 

So dangerous were the new "Laird Rams" re- 
garded by the United States naval authorities, that 
emissaries of the Federal Government were secretly 
sent to England to outbid the Confederacy, if possi- 
ble, for their possession; and ten millions of dollars 
in United States bonds were given them for the pur- 
pose. Finding that it would be dangerous and dif- 
ficult to put their instructions into effect, these 
emissaries returned home with the bonds "in the 
original packages, with the seals of the Treasury- 
unbroken." 

^ Adams, Adams (S. S.), pp. 318, 319, 320. 
^Ibid., p. 320. 



180 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

"You must stop (the Laird Rams) at all hazards/* 
wrote Fox, assistant secretary of the navy, to Adams, 
"as we have no defense against them. Let us have 
them for our own purposes, without any more non- 
sense and at any price. ... It is a question of life 
and death/ ^ ^ 

The "Laird Rams" never reached the high seas 
from the Birkenhead yards; but across the Channel 
the construction of similar vessels was giving the 
Federal Government uneasiness. Six ships of a for- 
midable character were built. The indefatigable SH- 
dell co-operated with the French Emperor in the con- 
struction of two ironclads and four cHpper corvettes; 
but of these, only one ever reached its destination, 
Napoleon, as Rhodes says, having determined "to 
change his tune.'* This one of the six French ships 
was the Stonewall, a ram with armored sides, a 
300-pounder rifled Armstrong gun in the casemated 
bow, and a fixed turret aft containing two rifled 70- 
pounders. In March, 1865, she fell in with the 
United States frigate Niagara and the sloop-of-war 
Sacramento outside the harbor of Corunna, and of- 
fered them battle, which they declined. "It is only 
necessary," writes Soley, "to make one comment 
on this affair. The Stonewall was truly an ugly 
antagonist. It is the opinion of many professional 

1 Adams, Adams (S. S.), pp. 321, 322, citing Hughes, Letters and 
Recollections of J. M. Forbes, vol. II, pp. 1-66; Chittenden, Recol- 
lections of Lincoln, vol. I, pp. 194-211; and Proceedings Mass. Hist. 
Soc, 2d Series, vol. XIII, pp. 177-9. 



SEA-POWER AND THE CRUISERS 181 

men that, properly handled, she could have sunk 
the two American vessels; and as far as probabili- 
ties were concerned, the chances might be said to 
He with the ram." The Stonewall never fought a 
battle. She proceeded to Lisbon, and thence to 
Havana, where after the end of the war, she was 
surrendered to the United States by the Spanish 
Government.^ 

The Geneva Tribunal later exacted payment of 
the "little bill" which the Alabama and her sister 
cruisers had run up against Great Britain. But of 
the cruisers themselves, and of what they accom- 
plished. Professor Soley, a high naval authority, 
has written: "A great deal of uncalled-for abuse 
has been heaped upon the South for the work of 
the Confederate cruisers, and their mode of war- 
fare has been repeatedly denounced as barbarous 
and piratical in official and unofficial publications. 
But neither the privateers, like the Petrel and the 
Savannah, nor the commissioned cruisers, like the 
Alabama and the Florida, were guilty of any prac- 
tices which, as against their enemies, were contrary 
to the laws of war." ^ No attack was ever made 
without previous notice, and the safety of both 
crews and passengers of captured vessels was al- 
ways provided for before their destruction. 

1 The Blockade and the Cruisers, p. 221; Cotton, pp. 290, 291, citing 
Rhodes, IV, pp. 380, 385, 388. 

2 The Blockade and the Cruisers, p. 229; Confederate PortraitSf 
pp. 219-246. 



CHAPTER XV 
ECONOMIC AND MILITARY CONDITIONS 

The consequence of the blockade was a general 
restriction of the war-supphes of the Confederacy 
to such as existed in the South at the beginning of 
hostilities, or could be brought in from abroad be- 
fore the blockade became effective. There was 
no tmth in the story that once prevailed, which 
was largely developed and propagated by General 
Winfield Scott, that large quantities of army and 
mihtary supplies had been sent South by Secretary 
Floyd during Buchanan's administration,^ or that 
the Confederacy acquired by seizure from the United 
States Government the machinery and plants for 
their manufacture, together with a great supply of 
ordnance and ordnance stores. Not a gun nor a gun- 
carriage, and, except for the Mexican War, scarcely 
a roimd of ammunition, had for fifty years been man- 
ufactured in the South.^ The aggregate of service- 
able arms was about one hundred and fifty thousand, 
and there was but little powder or ammunition of 
any kind stored in the Southern States. This small 

^ Mr. Buchanan^ s Administration, pp. 220-7. See article by 
Robert M. Hughes, Richmond Times-Dispatch, August 7, 1911. 
* Wise, Long Arm of Lee, I, p. 24. 

182 



ECONOMIC CONDITIONS 183 

amount, with the exception of about sixty thousand 
pounds of old cannon-powder captured at Norfolk, 
had been left over after the war with Mexico. A 
few good batteries were owned by the several States, 
but the equipment of infantry, cavalry, and artillery 
was inadequate and insignificant. The arsenals at 
the South had been used solely as depots, and their 
contents were meagre. There was in them no ma- 
chinery for the preparation of war material, and 
there was no skilled labor with which munitions 
could be manufactured, if the machinery had ex- 
isted. There was no powder, save for domestic 
blasting and the small suppHes required by sports- 
men, nor was there any saltpetre. No lead-mines 
had been developed except those in Virginia, and 
copper was just beginning to be obtained from Ten- 
nessee. The few furnaces for the production of 
iron were the small charcoal-hearths of Virginia 
and west Tennessee, some of which had furnished 
the material for the cannon used at Valley Forge 
and Yorktown during the Revolution. The only 
cannon-foundry was the Tredegar Iron Works at 
Richmond. There were no rolling-mills for bar- 
iron south of the North Carolina line.^ 

Orders for powder were sent to the North before 
the attack on Fort Sumter, and were being rapidly 
filled when that event occurred, and the supply 
immediately ceased. In May, 1861, the general 

* Long Arm of Lee, I, pp. 47-51. 



184 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

condition of ordnance and ordnance supplies was 
one of almost total "unpreparedness/^ ^ 

The arsenals at Richmond, Charleston, and Selma, 
Alabama, were by degrees developed to large di- 
mensions, and produced the bulk of the ordnance 
necessary for the use of the armies; and powder- 
mills were estabHshed and successfully operated 
at various points. The chief armories for the manu- 
facture of small arms were situated at Richmond 
and Fayetteville, and when in good working order 
turned out about two thousand stands of arms a 
month. Ten thousand stands of small arms were 
obtained, of those flung away by the Northern army, 
from the battle-field of Manassas, and about twenty- 
five thousand from the fields of the Seven Days' 
Battles about Richmond in 1862. 

Gorgas, whom Davis had made chief of ordnance, 
illustrated an energy and ability in the develop- 
ment of the Ordnance Department of the govern- 
ment which were as remarkable as Bulloch's work 
with the cruisers in England. General Joseph E. 
Johnston declared of Gorgas that '^he created the 
ordnance department out of nothing." 

The Confederate chief of ordnance has left the 
following account of his work: 

We began in April, 1861, without an arsenal, labora- 
tory, or powder-mill of any capacity, and with no foundry 

^ Short History, pp. 113-118; Long Arm of Lee, I, pp. 34 JT. 



ECONOMIC CONDITIONS 185 

or rolling-mill except in Richmond and before the close 
of 1863, — within a little over two years, — we supplied 
them. During the harassments of war, while holding 
our own in the field, defiantly and successfully, against 
a powerful enemy; crippled by a depreciated currency; 
cramped by a blockade that deprived us of nearly all the 
means of getting material or workmen; obliged to send 
almost every able-bodied man to the field; unable to use 
the slave-labor, with which we were abundantly supplied, 
except in the most unskilful departments of production; 
hampered by want of transportation, even of the com- 
monest supply of food; with no stock in hand, even of 
articles such as steel, copper, leather, iron, which we must 
have to build up our establishments, — against all these 
obstacles, in spite of all these deficiencies, — we persevered, 
at home, as determinedly did our troops in the field against 
a more inspiring opposition; and, in that short period, 
created almost literally out of the ground, foundries and 
rolling-mills at Selma, Richmond, Atlanta, and Macon; 
smelting- works at Petersburg; chemical works at Char- 
lotte, N. C; a powder-mill far superior to any in the 
United States and unsurpassed by any across the ocean; 
and a chain of arsenals, armories and laboratories equal 
in their capacity and their approved appointments to 
the best of those in the United States, stretching link by 
link from Virginia to Alabama.^ 



Agricultural supplies were more or less abundant 
in those parts of the South which were not over- 
run by the Northern forces; but the difficulties of 

^ Short History, p. 120; South in the Building of the Nation, XI, 
p. 415; Long Arm of Lee, I, pp. 39, 40. 



186 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

transportation, poor enough in the earher years of 
the struggle, grew greater with its continuance, 
until in 1865 the South possessed only the wreck 
of its ten thousand miles of railroad, which had 
been either nearing completion or in actual opera- 
tion in 1860. Their road-beds had gradually fallen 
into disrepair, their cuts had been filled up, their 
embankments washed away, their bridges burned 
or broken down, their depots and water-tanks de- 
stroyed.^ The depreciation of the currency, gradual 
at first but later rapid and destructive in its eco- 
nomic effect, compelled the government to resort 
to methods of impressment in order to secure the 
necessary suppHes of food and provender for the 
use of the armies in the field.^ But little clothing 
was manufactured by organized factories. All the 
essential elements of raw material, skilled labor, and 
the requisite aggregation of laborers were lacking. 
The spinning-wheels and looms of the plantations 
furnished a grossly inadequate amount of the cloth- 
ing required both for the white and black popula- 
tions at home, and for the generally ill-clad soldiers 
of the armies. As early as Lee's invasion of the 
North, the army of northern Virginia was without 
sufiicient clothes, or shoes. In advocating invasion, 

IjS. B. N., VI, p. 305, "Railway Transportation in the South"; 
The American Historical Review, July, 1917, " The Confederate Gov- 
ernment and the Railroads," vol. xvii, pp. 794-810. 

2 The Impressment Act, approved March 26, 1863; Appendix to 
Chase's U. S. Circuit Court Reports (N. Y., 1876), pp. 597-9. 



ECONOMIC CONDITIONS 187 

Lee confessed to Davis that his troops were hardly- 
equipped for service beyond the frontier.^ 

The tariff poHcy of the South, which at first had 
been of a free-trade character in order to encourage 
the importation of foreign suppKes, was later changed 
to one which forbade exportations with a view to 
compelling European recognition. Exceptions, how- 
ever, were made in favor of those who were in a 
position to engage in the export trade, and would 
share their tonnage with the government.^ 

The finances of the Confederacy were weak from 
the beginning. Without an adequate metallic basis, 
its treasury was necessarily established on the un- 
substantial substructure of unsecured loans to its 
own citizens, with a circulating medium of notes, 
whose payment was conditional on the expiration 
of "two years after a treaty of peace" between the 
Confederate States and the United States. Its 
ways and means consisted of such domestic loans, 
and of taxes payable in such currency. The bonds 
issued by the government were paid for in this 
equivocal medium of exchange, and the bondholders 
received their interest in it. No serious effort was 
made to maintain specie payments for the obvious 
reason that the government's specie holdings were 
totally inadequate. Rhodes states that "$27,- 

^ Henderson, Stonewall Jackson, II, p. 250; 0. R. Series I, vol. 
XIX, part II, pp. 590, 591. 

2 Schwab, Economic Activities of the Confederacy, S. B. N ., V, p. 
481. 



188 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

000,000 is an outside estimate of the receipts in 
specie of the Confederate government during its 
life of four years.'' ^ 

After the adoption of its tariff laws, the first 
financial legislation of the Provisional Congress was 
the passage of an act authorizing a bond flotation 
of fifteen millions of dollars, with a pledge of a small 
export duty on cotton to provide for the redemption 
of the debt. At the next session of Congress, an 
issue of twenty millions of dollars of treasury notes 
was provided for, and a further issue of thirty mil- 
lions of dollars of bonds.^ 

After the first bond issue of 1861, there was no 
available market for government bonds; and when 
the bonds were sold for the treasury notes, redeem- 
able upon the uncertain condition of a treaty of 
peace between the contending governments, the 
treasury overflowed with a currency with which it 
was found increasingly difficult to buy supphes. 
A series of produce loans was attempted m May, 
1861; but while the producers of cotton, who saw 
in the newly inaugurated blockade an ever-lessening 
prospect of selling their cotton abroad, were willing 
to take the government's bonds and even its treasury 
notes in exchange, those who raised wheat and corn 
and five stock, and the other things by which life 
might be supported, held back. 



1 History, V, p. 344. 

2 Short History, pp. 121, 122; Schwab, The Finances of the Southern 
Confederacy, S. B. N., V, pp. 494, 495. 



ECONOMIC CONDITIONS 189 

Taxes in kind, in order to care for the armies, 
were imposed in 1863; but the results obtaiaed by 
the government's tax-gatherers were unsubstantial, 
and gave rise, in the methods of their collection, 
to much dissatisfaction. The question of provisions 
became at length so serious a one that the armies 
of the Confederacy were forced to living in large 
measure on what they could obtain from the locali- 
ties in which they were engaged. For this situation 
Davis was condemned by many people, and he was 
charged with having appointed and kept in office 
an incompetent commissary-general because he was 
his friend. But silent economic forces, working 
out the inevitable, counted for more than any ac- 
complishment that might have been wrought by an 
abler man than Northrop.^ 

In 1863 the volume of Confederate paper money 
in circulation was over six hundred millions of dol- 
lars. It was three times the amount requisite for 
the diminished business of the Confederacy, and 
its purchasing power was more than correspond- 
ingly lessened, not only by its redundancy, but be- 
cause even at that time it was believed by many 
to have but little prospect of ultimate redemption.^ 

Davis writes of the situation: 

The evils of this financial condition soon became ap- 
parent in a constant increase of prices, in stimulating 

} Short History, pp. 122, 123; Schwab, Finances of the Southern 
Confederacy, S. B. N., V, pp. 494-7; S. B. N., Southern Biography, 
XII, p. 235. 

2 Lower South, pp. 175-180. 



190 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

the spirit of speculation, and in discouraging com- 
merce. 

I therefore recommended to Congress (in December, 
1863), the compulsory reduction of the currency to the 
volume required to carry on the business of the country, 
to be accompanied by a pledge that in no strain of cir- 
cumstances would the amount be increased. 

The recommendation was incorporated in the act of 
February, 1864; one of the features of which was a tax 
levied on the circulation. After the law had been in opera- 
tion for one year, it was manifest that it had produced 
the desired effect of withdrawing from circulation the 
large excess of treasury notes which had been issued. 
On July 1, 1864, the outstanding amount was estimated 
at $230,000,000. The estimate of the amount funded 
imder the act about this time was $300,000,000, while 
new notes were authorized to be issued to the extent of 
two-thirds the sum received under its provisions.^ 

The first legislation of the Provisional Congress 
authorizing the President to employ the militia, 
and to ask for and accept the services of volunteers 
to a number not exceeding one hundred thousand 
whose term of service was limited to one year, was 
perceived to provide an insufficient army; and a 
Conscript Act was passed and approved by the 
President, April 16, 1862, by which authority was 
given him to call out and enroll for three years, un- 
less the war should end sooner, all white men resi- 
dents of the Confederate States between eighteen 
and thirty-five, and to continue those already en- 

1 Short History, p. 123. 



ECONOMIC CONDITIONS 191 

listed for a period of three years from their enlist- 
ment.^ 

On September 27, 1862, all white men between 
eighteen and forty-five were made liable to mihtary 
service for three years; and on February 17, 1863. 
all male free negroes, of whom there were many 
in the Southern States, between the ages of eighteen 
and fifty years, were designated for service in the 
ranks, for the construction of fortifications, and for 
work in the plants which manufactured munitions 
of war, and in the military hospitals; and the secre- 
tary of war was authorized to employ also, for these 
duties, slaves not to exceed twenty thousand in 
number. 

The War Department availed itself of later legis- 
lation by Congress authorizing the hiring of negro 
slaves for transportation service, and for construc- 
tion of fortifications. Along the Northern border, 
upon the Atlantic seaboard, and on the Gulf coast, 
negroes were employed in the making of defensive 
earthworks. But their owners were usually unwilling 
to permit them to work for the government, and re- 
course was finally had to impressment. This re- 
sulted in ultimate withdrawal of the negroes from 
the military works, and they were sent by their 
owners to the interior.^ 



^Chase's Reports, pp. 579-583; Appendix, The Conscript Act, 
approved April 16, 1862. 

2 Fleming, Labor in the South, 1861-5, S. B. N., V, p. 149. 



192 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

The matter of utilizing the negroes for mihtary 
service created considerable dissension; but Davis 
elaborated and pressed his view that they should 
be used in the field by urging Congress to enroll 
them as soldiers. Lee agreed with him, and testi- 
fied before a committee of Congress as to their prob- 
able military efficiency. 



CHAPTER XVI 
THE FIRST YEARS OF WAR 

In the elections held the first year of the war, for 
permanent officials and a Congress, Davis was 
unanimously re-elected President without opposi- 
tion. In the new Congress were many men of vary- 
ing views and opinions, and from its individualistic 
elements soon developed a critical and continuous 
antagonism to the policies of the administration. 

On February 22, 1862, the newly elected Presi- 
dent took the oath of office, and delivered his in- 
augural address in front of Crawford's equestrian 
statue of Washington in the Capitol Square at Rich- 
mond. He alluded to the anniversary occasion of 
the birthday of the Virginian, who had led the armies 
of the revolting colonies in the war for American 
Independence; and, after reciting the events which 
had culminated in the secession of the South, and 
the organization of the Confederate States, he de- 
fended the right of the States to withdraw from the 
Federal Union. He said: 

A million men, it is estimated, are now standing in 
hostile array, and waging war along a frontier of thou- 
sands of miles. Battles have been fought; sieges have 

193 



194 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

been conducted, and although the contest is not ended, 
and the tide for the moment is against us, the final result 
in our favor is not doubtful. . . . We have had our trials 
and difficulties. That we are to escape them in the fu- 
ture is not to be hoped. It was to be expected, when 
we entered upon this war, that it would expose our peo- 
ple to sacrifice and cost them much both of money and 
of blood. 

But the picture has its lights as well as its shadows. 
This great strife has awakened in the people the highest 
emotions and qualities of the human soul. ... It was 
perhaps in the ordination of Providence that we were to 
be taught the value of our liberties by the price we pay 
for them. The recollections of this great contest, with all 
its common traditions of glory, of sacrifice and blood, will 
be the bond of harmony and enduring affection amongst 
the people, producing unity in policy, fraternity in senti- 
ment, and just effort in war. 

He concluded with a prayer: "My hope is rev- 
erently fixed on Him whose favor is ever vouchsafed 
to the cause which is just. With humble gratitude 
and adoration, acknowledging the Providence which 
has so visibly protected the Confederacy during its 
brief but eventful career, to Thee, God, I trust- 
ingly commit myself, and prayerfully invoke Thy 
blessing on my country and its cause." ^ 

The "trials and difficulties'' of which he spoke 
were visible in the achievements of the North since 
Manassas. No battle of consequence had since 

* Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Confederacy, I, pp. 183-8; 
Memoir, II, pp. 180-3. 



THE FIRST YEARS OF WAR 195 

been fought in Virginia; but elsewhere along the 
far-reaching borders of the Confederacy disasters 
had befallen the South by sea and land alike. In 
August of the preceding year the forts at Hatteras 
Inlet on the Carolina seacoast had been captured 
by the blockading army of the Union, and the whole 
inland water region from Norfolk to Beaufort had 
been opened to the enemy. Roanoke Island, an 
important post within the Carolina sounds, had 
fallen in January, 1862, and every river-mouth 
and inlet from Norfolk to Wilmington was con- 
trolled by the Northern naval forces. Port Royal 
in South Carolina and the Florida seaboard were 
occupied by the United States navy, which had 
established bases in easy distance of every Southern 
port. In the interior, Fort Henry, on the east side 
of the Tennessee River, and Fort Donelson, on the 
west side of the Cumberland, had fallen to the 
Federals. The capture of the latter fort had com- 
pelled the evacuation of Nashville by Johnston. 
The surrender by the United States Government 
of Mason and Slidell, and the general development 
of the blockade, had wrought a feeling of hope- 
lessness among the people of the South that Great 
Britain and France would ever accord the Con- 
federacy the recognition which Davis and his ad- 
visers had counted on achieving through the simple 
diplomacy of cotton. Nearly two hundred colli- 
sions and minor conflicts between the contending 



196 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

forces had occurred in Virginia, West Virginia, Mis- 
souri, Louisiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee,^ as the 
deadly strangle-hold of the blockade grew tighter. 
Economic conditions in the beleaguered South had 
grown from bad to worse. Gold sold in Richmond 
on January 1, 1862, at a premium of fifty per cent, 
and the ordinary necessaries of life had risen enor- 
mously in price. 

In this depressing situation, Davis was the ob- 
ject of criticism and of adverse comment. Ben- 
jamin, who became secretary of state in March, 
1862, described at a later date, in a commimication 
to SHdell, the President's courage and patience 
under the condemnation of his critics: "In all cases 
without exception, however," he writes, "our chief 
magistrate is compelled to bear in silence any amount 
of clamor and obloquy, for in nine cases out of ten 
a disclosure of facts would injure the public interest. 
At moments like the present, when the calamities 
and distresses of a long war have created in weak 
and despondent souls the usual result on such na- 
tures, by making them querulous, unjust, and clam- 
orous, when men even with good intentions, but 
ignorant of the facts on which alone judgment can 
be based, join in denunciation of those in authority, 
it is a spectacle really sublime to observe the utter 
abnegation of self, the exclusive reliance on the 
mens conscia rectij the entire willingness to leave 

1 Brock, Virginia and VirginianSy II, pp. 449-452. 



THE FIRST YEARS OF WAR 197 

his vindication to posterity, which are displayed 
by the President." ^ 

The fall of Fort Donelson was the signal for an 
outburst of dissatisfaction with Davis and the ad- 
ministration. The senators and representatives 
from Tennessee, with one exception, waited on him, 
and demanded the removal of General Johnston 
from the command of the army in the West.^ 

While troubles encompassed the Confederacy and 
its President, significant events were occurring in 
the North. The Federal committee on the conduct 
of the war, an aggregate of civilians with no mili- 
tary knowledge or experience, were insisting on an 
immediate and more vigorous prosecution of of- 
fensive warfare, and the suppression of the '^rebel- 
lion." McClellan^s delay in moving south with 
the Army of the Potomac was fiercely -denounced, 
and Lincoln and his commander-in-chief were at 
loggerheads in regard to the plan of campaign.^ 
The Thirty-seventh Congress met in December, 
1861, and gave its attention to the war and to a 
consideration of emancipation as a war measure. 
Fremont, in August, 1861, in command of the West- 
ern department of the Union, had issued an order 
declaring the slaves of militant or active rebels 
''free men," which Lincoln nullified, after writing 

^ Butler, Benjamin, pp. 340, 341. 

2 Short History, p. 139. 

3 Morse, Lincoln, I {S. S.), pp. 312-321; Swinton, Army of the 
Potomac, pp. 69-74. 



198 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

to Fremont that he feared this action would '^ alarm 
our Southern Union friends, and turn them against 
us; perhaps ruin our rather fair prospect in Ken- 
tucky." But the moral advantage of the destruction 
of slavery was in the minds of many of the 
politicians, and in the first session of Congress in 
December, 1861, bills were introduced, not only 
for the punishment of treason, but to free those 
slaves who were employed against the govern- 
ment.^ 

"Lincoln remained in 1862,'^ says his biographer, 
Morse, "as he had been in 1858, tolerant towards 
the Southern men who by inheritance, tradition, 
and the necessity of the situation, constituted a 
slave-holding community. To treat slave owner- 
ship as a crime, punishable by confiscation and ruin, 
seemed to him unreasonable and merciless. Neither 
does he seem ever to have accepted the opinion of 
many AboHtionists, that the negro was the equal of 
the white man in natural endowment. There is no 
reason to suppose that he did not still hold, as he 
had done in the days of the Douglas debates, that 
it was undesirable, if not impossible, that the two 
races should endeavor to abide together in freedom 
as a unified community." ^ 

He favored gradual emancipation and payment 
for the slaves as a conciliatory war measure calcu- 

* Johnston, Am. Politics, p. 201; Morse, Lincoln {S. S.), p. 6. 
2 Ibid., II, pp. 18, 19. 



THE FIRST YEARS OF WAR 199 

lated to satisfy the border States, and it was only 
when this was found to be impracticable, that he 
took a more advanced step. That emancipation, 
when it did come at his hands, came as a military 
necessity and not as a humanitarian act, is evidenced 
not only by the declaration of the Proclamation it- 
self, that it was "a fit and necessary war measure 
for suppressing said rebellion,'^ but that its scope 
only included "persons held as slaves within said 
designated States and parts of States,'^ which were 
the ^'States and parts of States" "this day in rebel- 
lion against the United States." ^ Lincoln never 
wavered in his position that he was fighting the war 
to keep the Southern States in the Union, without 
regard to whether slavery stayed or went. 

The long-delayed advance of McClellan^s army 
on Richmond began in the spring of 1862, and on 
April 2 the Union forces, one hundred thousand 
strong, were at Yorktown on the Virginia peninsula. 
On April 6 and 7 the battle of Shiloh was fought in 
Tennessee, and Davis's friend, Albert Sidney John- 
ston, was killed in action. About the same time 
Island No. 10, in the Mississippi, an important 
strategic position in the Confederate line of defense, 
was captured by the Federals, with seven thousand 
prisoners and a large amount of military stores. 
The Southern armies in this section were forced into 
upper Mississippi and Alabama. The lower Missis- 

1 Richardson, Messages and Papers, VI, pp. 157-9. 



200 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

sippi River was opened up by the Union navy to 
New Orleans. On May 1, 1862, Norfolk and the 
lower Chesapeake Bay were in possession of the 
enemy. Eastern North Carolina, West Virginia, 
Kentucky, and Missouri were under the practical 
control of the Union forces. 

In March, 1862, occiu-red the famous fight be- 
tween the Confederate ram Virginia and the for- 
midable fleet of wooden battleships representing 
the United States. The United States frigate Mer- 
rimaCy which had been in the Gosport Navy Yard at 
Norfolk when the State seceded on April 17, 1861, 
and had been then scuttled and sunk, was now 
raised by the Virginians, her hull was roughly ar- 
mored, and she was converted into a war-vessel of 
novel design, under the supervision of John L. 
Porter, of Norfolk, and John M. Brooke, of the Vir- 
ginia Military Institute. 

On the morning of March 8 the reconstructed 
Merrimac steamed into Hampton Roads to attack 
the Federal war-vessels lying there. In the fight 
which followed between the strange Confederate 
craft, now called the Virginia, and the United States 
ships, the latter were overwhelmed and demoralized. 
The Cumberland was sunk, the Congress was burned, 
and the rest of the fleet was scattered. By the re- 
sults of this fight the reconstructed Merrimac dem- 
onstrated the superiority of iron ships to wooden 
ones, and revolutionized naval warfare throughout 



THE FIRST YEARS OF WAR 201 

the world. During the night following the Vir- 
ginia's attack on the fleet, the little Monitor, even 
more singular in its construction than the Virginia, 
and totally different in its movement and operation, 
came through the Capes into Hampton Roads, and 
steaming in between the stranded Minnesota and 
the Confederate ram, renewed the previously un- 
equal fight. The conflict between the Monitor and 
the Virginia was the first battle that ever took 
place between iron-clad ships. For four hours they 
fought in desperate combat, and without visible 
effect, until a shell from the Virginia exploded in 
the Monitor's revolving turret, and the ^^ittle 
cheese-box on a raft" retired out of range of her 
adversary's guns, toward Old Point Comfort. The 
Virginia waited for three-quarters of an hour for 
the return of the lighter draft vessel from the shoal 
water in which she had taken refuge, and then went 
back to Norfolk; The Monitor risked no further 
encounter with her adversary, and for several weeks 
the latter protected the right wing of Johnston's 
army on the peninsula; but when Norfolk and the 
peninsula were evacuated by the Confederate forces, 
the commander of the Virginia, unable to utiHze 
her further, blew her up at Craney Island. 

Both sides claimed the victory in the Hampton 
Roads battle; but the controversy may be said to 
have been settled in favor of the Virginia. The re- 
sults were not immediately of moment, and the sig- 



202 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

nificance of the episode consisted, not in the triumph 
of either vessel, but in the fact that thenceforward 
the sea-power of the world was to be clad in ar- 
mor.^ 

In May, 1862, Norfolk was evacuated, and the 
Confederate army was forced by McClellan^s ad- 
vance to retire to a position in front of Richmond. 
In the latter part of June the Seven Days^ battles 
took place, in which the Confederates drove the 
Union armies to the shelter of their fleet at Harri- 
son's Landing, on James River, with the loss of 
fifty-two cannon, twenty-seven thousand muskets, 
ten thousand prisoners, and large quantities of mili- 
tary stores. 

But the Confederacy paid heavily for these vic- 
tories, for the losses of the Southern armies in the 
Seven Days' fights were more than twenty per cent 
larger in killed and wounded than those of the 
Federal forces. ^ 

On September 17, 1862, Lee fought McClellan on 
the Antietam, at Sharpsburg, in a battle in which 
the casualties were many on either side, and retired 
into Virginia. "Where is the splendid division you 
had this morning?" Henderson says Lee inquirea 



1 Tyler, The South in the War, S. B. N., IV, pp. 513, 614; Short 
History, pp. 201-9; Soley, The Blockade and the Cruisers, p. 72; So. 
Hist. Soc. Papers, i, p. 26; Ibid., ii, pp. 31-40, 65-67; Ibid., xvi, 
pp. 218-222; Ibid., xxxiv, pp. 316-326. 

2 Walter L. Clark, North Carolina in the Confederacy, S. B. N., I, 
p. 491. 



THE FIRST YEARS OF WAR 203 

of Hood; who reported to him after the battle that 
he had no men left. ^'They are lying on the field 
where you sent them/^ was the reply, '^for few 
have straggled. My division has been almost wiped 
out." ^ 

On September 22, 1862, President Lincoln warned 
the Southern States that unless they should return 
to their allegiance to the Union he would as an act 
of military necessity declare the slaves in those 
States emancipated. 

Lincoln's view that it was the people of the seceded 
States who were in rebellion, and that the States 
themselves had never left the Union, was contro- 
verted by many of the Republican leaders, notably 
Thaddeus Stevens, of Pennsylvania, who ridiculed 
the claim that the ^^ rebel" States were still in the 
Union, and that whenever our "wayward sisters 
choose to abandon their frivolities and present 
themselves at the door of the Union, we must re- 
ceive them with open arms." "Could any one," 
Stevens asked, in a pubHc address, "deny to a con- 
test of the magnitude of the rebellion the term 
'civil war'? The powers of Europe had recognized 
the Southern States as belligerents. What was 
even more conclusive, ^with imfortunate haste we 
blockaded their ports,' and thereby ourselves ac- 
knowledged their belligerency. We 'had treated 
their captive soldiers as prisoners of war/ ex- 

^ Stonewall Jackson, II, p. 323. 



204 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

changed prisoners, and sent flags of truce. 'This 
is not the usage awarded to an unorganized hsm- 
ditti/^^ "If public war existed/^ he said, 'Hhen it 
was clear that no compacts, laws and paper obli- 
gations could be relied upon by the South against 
the North."! 

The fighting South paid no attention to Northern 
threats of emancipation, and on January 1, 1863, 
the Proclamation was issued. To make it legal, an 
amendment to the Constitution was necessary, and 
the Thirteenth Amendment was passed in February, 
1865, in the second session of the Thirty-eighth 
Congress, having failed to receive "a two-thirds 
majority" in the session preceding.^ 

The feelings engendered by the war were now of 
such an intense character on either side that the 
Emancipation Proclamation developed no such an- 
tagonism in the North as it would have encountered 
if it had occurred in 1861; and the South regarded 
it as an incident of a contest in which every avail- 
able instrumentality would naturally be utilized by 
the enemy. The South had no fear of either the 
desertion or the insurrection of the slaves, and 
was of a like opinion to that which Lincoln ex- 
pressed in September, 1862, to the clergymen from 
Chicago, who urged him to proclaim immediate 
and universal emancipation : 

1 McCall, Stevens {S. S.), pp. 200-2. 
^ Johnston, Am. Politics, pp. 202, 206. 



THE FIRST YEARS OF WAR 205 

What good would a proclamation of emancipation from 
me do, especially as we are now situated ? I do not want 
to issue a document that the whole world will see must 
necessarily be inoperative, like the Pope's bull against 
the comet ! Would my word free the slaves, when I can- 
not even enforce the Constitution in the rebel States? 
Is there a single court or magistrate, or individual that 
would be influenced by it there? And what reason is 
there to think it would have any greater effect upon the 
slaves than the late law of Congress, which I approved, 
and which offers protection and freedom to the slaves of 
rebel masters who come within our lines? Yet I cannot 
learn that that law had caused a single slave to come over 
to us.^ 

In 1863 Lee at Chancellorsville confronted Hooker, 
who was in command of the Army of the Potomac, 
and defeated him. The victory was a costly one to 
the Confederacy in the loss of '^ Stonewall'^ Jack- 
son, who was accidentally shot by his own men. 
Lee marched into Pennsylvania, threatening Balti- 
more and Philadelphia; and on July 3, 1863, oc- 
curred the battle of Gettysburg, which resulted in 
the defeat of the Southern army and its retreat 
across the Potomac. In the west Vicksburg was 
captured by Grant, after a long siege, on July 4, and 
five days later occurred the fall of Port Hudson, 
involving a loss to the Confederacy of forty thou- 
sand veteran soldiers. In September the Southern 

^ Morse, Lincoln {S. S.), II, pp. 110, 111; Johnston, Am. Politics, 
p. 203, 



206 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

army of the west, under Bragg, won a victory at 
Chickamauga, and two months later lost the bat- 
tles of Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge. 

The opposition to the administration policies of 
DaviS; which had developed early in the war, in- 
creased with its progress. The Confederate Presi- 
dent's disinclination to conciliation or compromise, 
which came not only from natural disposition but 
from his earlier military education, plantation ex- 
perience, and long political leadership, had brought 
him in conflict early in his administration with many 
of the Southern leaders, both military and civilian, 
who were individualists in thought and action, and 
were possessed of personal ambitions. With his 
great regard for constitutional limitations, he had 
been reluctant, even under military necessity, to 
suspend the writ of habeas corpus in 1861; and his 
final use of this effective weapon in dealing with 
conditions which compelled it was only brought 
about by the demand of Congress and of the people 
in the localities in which its suspension was deemed 
essential.^ Lincoln had also suspended the writ in 
April, 1861, without the authority of Congress, in 
order to prevent the secession of Maryland, and on 
the theory that many of the Northern courts were 
disposed to interfere with the military arrest of 
suspected persons. While the suspension of the 
writ in the North resulting in the arrest and im- 

» Dodd, Life, p. 291. 



THE FIRST YEARS OF WAR 207 

prisonment of many thousand persons^ had proved 
a continuously potent ground of complaint with 
the enemies of the Republican administration,^ its 
temperate exercise in the South by Davis afforded 
slight cause for the criticism of him which had its 
origin in other sources. There were no "midnight 
arrests^' in the Confederacy; and a freedom of 
speech, which became unbridled on the part of the 
press, contributed in no slight measure to the em- 
barrassments and difficulties of his administration. 
Three of the leading journals of the South, with in- 
tense and often vindictive accusation, held Davis 
and his policies up to ridicule and abuse, and con- 
tinued their destructive opposition to him through- 
out the war. 

His peculiar personal characteristics of a stately 
aloofness, which seemed to border on arrogance, of 
frequently unreckoning loyalty to friends, of a 
directness in his dealings with men which was at 
times abrupt, and of an ingrained imperiousness 
due to temperament and education, made him the 
object of fierce attack on the part of those who dis- 
approved his conduct of the office and of the war. 
The individuaHsm of the "Old South'' was domi- 
nating in its political no less than in its social life, 
and when a military status developed, all the jeal- 

* Alexander Johnston estimates the number at 38,000, while 
Rhodes concedes a very large but lesser number. Lalor's Cyclop., II, 
p. 433, Habeas Corpus; Rhodes, History, vol. IV, pp. 230, 231, note. 

2 Morse, Lincoln {S. S.), I, pp. 286-291. 



208 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

ousies and antagonisms and ambitions incident to 
a period of stress and struggle projected themselves 
into the arena of public affairs. 

As soon as he was elected President, trouble had 
arisen over his choice of the general officers of the 
army. His first cabinet in a few months had dem- 
onstrated its incongruity by the retirement of sev- 
eral of its members. Governors of the States came 
to him, and sought to dictate the appointment of 
their favorites, both to subordinate and to superior 
offices. The State-sovereignty spirit of the ante- 
bellum situation was still pervasive and compelling, 
and the executives of some of the States antagonized 
Davis's measures and refused to recognize his au- 
thority. Governor Joseph E. Brown, of Georgia, 
went so far as to denounce the conscript acts, and 
wrote to Davis: "The people of Georgia will refuse 
to yield their sovereignty to usurpation."^ 

The critics of the administration invoked the 
theory of equilibrium, and demanded that for every 
antebellum Whig appointed by the President to 
office, there should be a counterbalancing Demo- 
crat. Davis, with resolution and courage, while 
yielding his views in regard to civil appointments, 
which were comparatively few, in his army designa- 
tions gave preference to men of military training 
and experience.^ 

10. R. Series IV, vol. II, p. 131. 
« Dodd, Life, pp. 291, 292. 



THE FIRST YEARS OF WAR 209 

The independence of the States, emphasized by 
the Confederate Constitution, cropped out con- 
stantly to hamper and at times almost to dismay 
an executive whose hope of success necessarily lay 
largely in a possible ability to concentrate and cen- 
tralize power. The looseness and incoherence of 
the constituent parts of the new government, fight- 
ing for its life, was one of the most significant char- 
acteristics of the situation. The custom had been 
to permit the rank and file of the army to elect all 
except their general officers and those of a regimental 
rank, at the ballot-box; and the regimental officers 
were appointed by the governors of the several 
States. Lee, in 1862, urged upon Davis a change 
in this method, which he adopted. But some of 
the governors refused their co-operation, and the 
spirit of antagonism to the administration was still 
further aroused by their action. Complaints arose 
in various sections in regard to the distribution of 
the troops; and a sense of deep dissatisfaction with 
the government possessed the minds not only of the 
politicians but of many of the Southern people. 
The whole situation had much of its origin in the 
general characteristics of the average Southerner, 
and illustrated General Johnston's statement with 
reference to the Confederate soldiery at Manassas: 

Our men had in a larger degree the instinct of personal 
liberty than those of the North; and it was found very 



210 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

diflficult to subordinate their personal will to the needs 
of military discipline.^ 

The Confederate Congress lacked sympathy with 
the executive branch of the government, and con- 
tinually antagonized the President's measures and 
policies; and Davis found constant difficulty in ob- 
taining the enactment of legislation, which he re- 
garded as essential to the proper conduct of the war. 
The use of centralized authority beyond constitu- 
tional limits was repugnant to the political thought 
and conduct of his whole life; and military efficiency 
was impaired at times by the President's unwilling- 
ness to assume powers, unwarranted by the Con- 
stitution, but which might have proved effective, 
especially in dealing with State authorities and con- 
ditions which their conduct created.^ 

* Dodd, Life, pp. 293, 294; Swinton, Army of the Potomac, p. 59. 

2 Butler, Constitution and Government of the Confederate States, 
S. B. N., IV, pp. 497, 498, citing Schwab, History of the Confederate 
States, p. 214. 



CHAPTER XVII 
DARK DAYS IN WAR-TIME 

In spite of disasters in some quarters, the second 
year of the war was marked by a series of Confed- 
erate victories which gave strong hopes of an inde- 
pendent South. But when success seemed at its 
highest, Gettysburg and Vicksburg turned the scales 
of war, not only for the forces in the field in Amer- 
ica but for the silent forces warring in England and 
France. American courage and endurance had been 
equally illustrated by either side in each of these 
historic conflicts, and Davis writes of Gettysburg, 
in his Rise and Fall: 

The battle of Gettysburg has been the subject of an 
unusual amount of discussion, and the enemy has made 
it a matter of extraordinary exultation. As an affair of 
arms it was marked by feats of mighty valor, to which 
both combatants may point with military pride. It was 
a graceful thing in President Lincoln, if, as reported, when 
he was shown the steeps which the Northern men per- 
sistently held, he answered, " I am proud to be the coun- 
tryman of the men who assailed those heights."^ 

Lee's army had come back to Virginia after Get- 
tysburg, with an organization that was unimpaired, 

* Memoir, II, p. 391. 
211 



212 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

and still possessed of high confidence; but the news- 
papers and the opinion of the country were dis- 
satisfied and critical. The relations which had ex- 
isted from the first between the President and his 
commander-in-chief continued imchanged, and the 
issue of the battle caused no waning of Davis's con- 
fidence in Lee. 

On July 28, 1863, he wrote Lee a long letter in 
which he said: 

Misfortune often develops secret foes, and still oftener 
makes men complain. It is comfortable to hold some one 
responsible for one's discomfort. In various quarters there 
are mutterings of discontent, and threats of alienation are 
said to exist, with preparation for organized opposition. 
There are others who, faithful, but dissatisfied, find an 
appropriate remedy in the removal of ofiicers who have 
not succeeded. They have not counted the cost of fol- 
lowing their advice. Their remedy, to be good, should 
furnish substitutes who would be better than the officers 
displaced.^ 

Lee answered this letter July 21 : 

Your note of the 27th, enclosing a slip from the Charles- 
ton Mercury relative to the battle of Gettysburg is 
received. I much regret its general censure upon the 
operations of the army, as it is calculated to do us no good 
either at home or abroad. But I am prepared for similar 
criticism, and as far as I am concerned, the remarks fall 
harmless. I am particularly sorry, however, that from 

1 0. R. Series I, vol. LI, part 2, p. 741. 



DARK DAYS IN WAR-TIME 213 

partial information and mere assumption of facts, injus- 
tice should be done any officer, and that occasion should 
be taken to asperse your conduct, who of all others are 
most free of blame. I do not fear that your position in 
the confidence of the people can be injured by such at- 
tacks, and I hope the official reports will protect the repu- 
tation of every officer. These cannot be made at once, 
and in the meantime, as you state, much falsehood may 
be promulgated. But truth is mighty and will eventually 
prevail. As regards the article in question, I think it 
contains its own contradiction. Although charging Heth^ 
with the failure of the battle, it expressly states he was 
absent wounded. The object of the writer and publisher 
is evidently to cast discredit upon the operations of the 
Government and those connected with it, and thus gratify 
feelings more to be pitied than envied. ... No blame 
can be attached to the army for its failure to accomplish 
what was projected by me, nor should it be censured for 
the unreasonable expectations of the public. I am alone 
to blame in perhaps expecting too much of its prowess 
and valor.2 

On August 8 he followed up this personal com- 
munication to the President by one in which he 
urged that some one more capable than himself 
should be put in his place. 

"I know/' he wrote, ''how prone we are to cen- 
sure and how ready to blame others for the non-ful- 
filment of our expectations. This is unbecoming in 
a generous people, and I grieve to see its expression. 

1 Heth's Report, 0. R. Series I, vol. XXVII, part 2, pp. 637 ff. 
^ Lee's Confidential Dispatches to Davis, p. 110. 



214 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

The general remedy for the want of success in a 
military commander is his removal. I have been 
prompted by these reflections more than once since 
my return from Pennsylvania, to propose to your 
Excellency the propriety of selecting another com- 
mander for this army. I have seen and heard of 
expression of discontent in the public journals at 
the result of the expedition. I do not know how 
far this feeling extends in the army. My brother 
officers have been too kind to report it, and so far 
the troops have been too generous to exhibit it. 
It is fair, however, to suppose that it does exist, 
and success is so necessary to us that nothing should 
be risked to secure it. I therefore in all sincerity, 
request your Excellency to take measures to supply 
my place.'' ^ 

To Lee's suggestion of his retirement from the 
command of the army in order to give place to a 
better man, Davis replied, on August 11, with a 
declination couched in terms characteristic of the 
relations between them and indicative of his un- 
diminished confidence: 

I admit the propriety of your conclusions that an officer 
who loses the confidence of his troops should have his 
position changed whatever may be his abiHty; but when 
I read the sentence, I was not at all prepared for the ap- 
plication you were about to make. Expressions of dis- 
content in the public journals furnish but little evidence 

» 0. R. Series I, vol. LI, part 2, p. 752. 



DARK DAYS IN WAR-TIME 215 

of the sentiment of an army. I wish it were otherwise 
even though all the abuse of myself should be accepted 
as the results of honest observation. 

Were you capable of stooping to it, you could easily 
surround yourself with those who would fill the press 
with your laudations, and seek to exalt you for what you 
have not done, rather than detract from the achievements 
which will make you and your army the subject of his- 
tory, and object of the world's admiration for generations 
to come. . . . 

But suppose, my dear friend, that I were to admit, 
with all their implications, the points which you present, 
where am I to find that new commander who is to possess 
the greater ability which you believe to be required? I 
do not doubt the readiness with which you would give 
way to one who could accomplish all that you have wished, 
and you will do me the justice to believe that, if Providence 
should kindly offer such a person for our use, I would not 
hesitate to avail myself of his services. 

My sight is not sufficiently penetrating to discover 
such hidden merit, if it exists, and I have but used to 
you the language of sober earnestness, when I have im- 
pressed upon you the propriety of avoiding all unneces- 
sary exposure to danger, because I felt your country could 
not bear to lose you. To ask me to substitute you by 
some one in my judgment more fit to command, or who 
would possess more of the confidence of the army, or of 
reflecting men in the country, is to demand an impos- 
sibility.^ 

In the first week of July, 1863, and before the 
battle of Gettysburg, Davis sent Vice-President 

* Memoir, II, pp. 397-9; Lee the American, pp. 56-58. 



216 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

Stephens as a commissioner with an official com- 
munication to President Lincoln in regard to the 
exchange of prisoners. There had been grave diffi- 
culties encountered by the Southern Government in 
its efforts to execute the cartel of exchange; and the 
further promotion of these efforts was Stephens's 
immediate mission. In his letter communicating 
his general instructions to Stephens, the President 
wrote : 

My whole purpose is, in one word, to place this war 
on the footing of such as are waged by civilized people 
in modern times, and to divest it of the savage character 
which has been impressed on it by our enemies, in spite 
of all our efforts and protests. War is full enough of un- 
avoidable horrors, under all its aspects, to justify and 
even to demand of any Christian ruler who may unhappily 
engage in carrying it on, to seek to restrict its calamities, 
and to divest it of all unnecessary severities.^ 

The letter which was to be dehvered by Stephens 
to Lincoln was addressed to the Union President 
in his capacity of commander-in-chief of the land 
and naval forces of the United States. It was signed 
by Davis in a like capacity on behalf of his govern- 
ment. Stephens was halted at Newport News by 
the officials of the Federal navy, until his request 
to be allowed to pursue his journey to Washmgton 
could be communicated to the Northern Govern- 
ment. 

* Memoir^ II, p. 402. 



DARK DAYS IN WAR-TIME 217 

The reply came: ^^The request is inadmissible. 
The customary agents and channels are adequate 
for all needful military communications and con- 
ferences between the United States forces and 
the insurgents/' "This/' subsequently commented 
Davis, "was all the notice ever taken of our humane 
propositions. We were stigmatized as insurgents, 
and the door was shut in our faces." ^ 

Until the end of the war Davis vainly continued 
his effort to , make effective the operation of the 
cartel; whiles the ration of the Confederate soldier 
in the field, which soon came to be one-third of a 
pound of meat, and one pound of indifferent meal 
or flour a day, and later grew worse and worse, was 
the logical answer of the Confederacy to the Northern 
charge of starvation of Union prisoners in the "rebel 
pens" of the SouthV. 

The blockade froia an early period of the con- 
flict had reduced the Confederacy to serious straits, 
which were aggravated by the unsolved problems 
of food transportation. The Federal prisoners al- 
most from the beginning were compelled to endure 
multiplied miseries, which were imposed by the 
economic conditions of a distressed country, con- 
ditions which were shared with them by their cap- 
tors and by the women and children and slaves of 
the beleaguered territory. 

Charles A. Dana, commenting on a letter from 

^Memoir, II, pp. 400-411; Alfriend, Life, pp. 469-471. 



218 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

Davis, January 17, 1876, to James Lyons in re- 
lation to the treatment of Federal prisoners at 
Andersonville, said editorially in the New York 
Sun: 

This letter shows clearly, we think, that the Confeder- 
ate authorities, and especially Mr. Davis, ought not to be 
held responsible for the terrible privations, sufferings and 
injuries which our men had to endure while they were 
kept in the Confederate military prisons. 

The fact is unquestionable that while the Confederates 
desired to exchange prisoners, to send our men home and 
get back their men. General Grant steadily and strenu- 
ously resisted such an exchange. While in his opinion 
the prisoners in our hands were well-fed and were in 
better condition than when they were captured, our 
prisoners in the South were ill-fed, and would be re- 
stored too much exhausted by famine and disease to form 
a fair set off against the comparative vigorous men, who 
would be given in exchange. 

Commenting further on Grant^s refusal of ex- 
change, and on his remarks about it, the editorial 
continues: "This evidence must be taken as con- 
clusive. It proves that it was not the Confederate 
authorities who insisted on keeping our prisoners 
in distress, want, and disease, but the commander 
of our own armies. We do not say that his reason 
for this course was not valid; but it was not Jeffer- 
son Davis, or any subordinate of his, who should 
now be condemned for it. We were responsible 



DARK DAYS IN WAR-TIME 219 

ourselves for the continued misery, starvation, and 
sickness in the South." ^ 

The New York Tribune of January, 1876, pub- 
lished a letter from Judge Shea, who was one of 
Davis's counsel at his trial, detailing the circum- 
stances under which Greeley and Gerrit Smith went 
on Davis's bail-bond; and introduced the letter 
with the following comment: 

Chief Justice George Shea, of the Marine Court, who 
sends us an interesting letter about Jefferson Davis, was, 
as well known, the principal agent in securing the signa- 
tures of Mr. Greeley, Gerrit Smith, and others to Mr. 
Davis's bail-bond. The essential point of his present 
statement is that Mr. Greeley and the other gentlemen 
whom he approached on that subject were unwilling to 
move in the matter until entirely satisfied of Mr. Davis's 
freedom from the guilt of intentional cruelty to Northern 
prisoners at Anderson ville; that Judge Shea, at the in- 
stance of Mr. Greeley and Vice-President Wilson, went to 
Canada to inspect the Journals of the Secret Sessions of 
the Confederate Senate, documents which up to this time 
have never passed into the hands of our government, or 
been accessible to Northern readers; that from these 
records, including numerous messages from Davis on the 
subject, it conclusively appeared that the Rebel Senate 
believed the Southern prisoners were mistreated at the 
North; that they were eager for retaliation and that Davis 
strenuously and to the end resisted these efforts; and 

* This editorial is quoted in Stevenson, The Southern Side, pp. 
445-7, but the immediate date of its publication is not given. See 
also Alfriend, Life, pp. 509-532; Memoir, II, p. 547. 



220 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

that he attempted to send Vice-President Stephens North 
to consult with President Lincoln on the subject. No 
more important statements than these concerning that 
phase of the Civil War have been given to the public. 
They shed light upon the course of Mr. Greeley, and other 
eminent citizens of the North; and it seems to us clear 
that on many accounts the Rebel authorities owe it to/ 
themselves and to history to give the public the doci 
ments which Judge Shea was permitted to see.^ 

Shea states in this letter that Greeley had re- 
ceived a communication from Mrs. Davis, dated 
June 22, 1865, written from Savannah, Georgia, in 
which she ^^ implored Mr. Greeley to insist upon a 
speedy trial" of her husband on the charges that 
had been made against him by the Bureau of Mili- 
tary Justice, of being accessory to the assassination 
of President Lincoln, ^^and upon all other supposed 
cruelties that were alleged he had inflicted." Greeley 
showed Mrs. Davis's letter to Shea, saying that he 
could not believe the charge true; and asked him 
to become professionally interested in Davis. Shea 
replied that '^unless our Government was willing 
to have it inferred that Wirz was convicted and his 
sentence of death inflicted unjustly, it could not 
now overlook the superior who was at least pop- 
ularly regarded as the moving cause." Greeley 
consulted with Vice-President Wilson, Governor 
John A. Andrew, Thaddeus Stevens, and Gerrit 

1 Stevenson, The Southern Side, pp. 480-8; Memoir, II, pp. 786-9. 



DARK DAYS IN WAR-TIME 221 

Smith, and at their request Shea undertook the 
visit to Canada. 

"The result of my examination/^ he states, "was 
that these gentlemen, and those others in sympathy 
with them, changed their former suspicion to a 
favorable opinion. They were from this time kept 
informed of movements made to liberate Mr. Davis, 
or to compel a trial. All this took place before any 
one acting on his behalf was allowed to communicate 
with or see him." ^ 

The cartel of exchange, which was established 
in February, 1862, and which provided that prisoners 
on either side should be paroled within ten days 
after their capture, and delivered on the frontier 
of their own country, became practically inoperative 
within a few months; and, after August 18, 1864, 
the date of Grant's communication to Butler, di- 
recting him to make no further exchanges, had en- 
tirely ceased.^ 

Those Southern newspapers which were hostile to 
Davis attacked him on the ground of his "ill-timed 
tenderness" in his methods of conducting the war. 
The Richmond Examiner published a "bill of fare" 
provided for one of the military prisons of the 
South, and invoked the indignation of the country 
upon a poHcy which fed hostile prisoners better 
than its own soldiers.^ 

1 The Southern Side, pp. 480-8; Memoir, II, pp. 780-4. 

« The Southern Side, pp. 445-7. ^ Alfriend, Life, p. 531. 



222 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

Meantime there were "hard times'^ in the Con- 
federacy, The available food products of the coun- 
try steadily diminished; the means of transportation 
became more and more inadequate; the stringency 
of the blockade grew to a maximum. Medicines 
were contraband of war, and the South searched 
her forests and meadows for restoratives.^ Quinine, 
an essential drug in the malarial sections of the 
lower South, sold for $100 an ounce.^ The Confed- 
erate women made coffee from parched sweet 
potatoes and from toasted corn and rye. They 
used sorghum syrup for sugar. The blankets which 
covered them in winter were of home-woven cloth, 
and old carpets furnished the covering for shoes 
whose soles were often "wooden bottoms. ^^ ^ In 
April, 1864, the purchasing power of Confederate 
currency had diminished until the monthly pay of 
the Confederate soldier would not serve to buy him 
the scantiest meal. Tea was $22 a pound; coffee, 
$12; brown sugar, $10; flour, $125 a barrel; milk, 
$4 a quart. Country produce, where it was accessi- 
ble, was not so relatively high. Bacon and lard 
could be had at $8.25 a pound, com at $12 a 
bushel, and fodder $12 a hundred, when sugar 
fetched $900 a barrel. 

These figures are from a contemporary diary of a 

* Henderson, Stonewall Jackson, II, pp. 426, 470, note 1. 

* Henderson, Jackson, II, p. 498, note 1. 

3 Memoir, II, p. 531 ; Century Magazine, "Hard Times in the Con- 
federacy," Sept., 1888, p. 760. 



DARK DAYS IN WAR-TIME 223 

resident of Richmond, which further states: "The 
following prices are now (April, 1864) paid in this 
city: Boots, $200; coats, $350; pants, $100; shoes, 
$125; flour, $275 per barrel; meal, $60 to $80 per 
bushel; bacon, $9 per pound; no beef in market; 
chickens, $30 per pair; shad, $20; potatoes, $20 per 
bushel; turnip greens, $4 per peck; white beans, $4 
per quart or $120 per bushel; butter, $15 per pound; 
lard, same; wood, $50 per cord. What a change a 
decisive victory — or defeat — would make!''^ 

The President's family fared no better than those 
of other people. They had no perquisites, and 
bought their domestic supplies at the public market 
and for the current prices. They were in like pre- 
dicament with the whole South, free, bond, and cap- 
tiye. 

Davis, after the fall of the Confederacy, was not 
ofily charged by the Bureau of Military Justice 
with impHcation in the murder of President Lincohi 
but also with having conspired with Captain Henry 
Wirz, commandant of the military prison at Ander- 
sonville, and with James A. Seddon, Howell Cobb, 
Winder, and others, to cause through cruelty the 
death of thousands of the prisoners confined there. 
Wirz was tried by a military commission; and 
though protesting his innocence, was found guilty 
and executed in Washington, November 10, 1865. 
He was offered his life, after conviction, upon undis- 

* Memoir, II, p. 532. 



224 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

closed authority, if he would implicate Davis in the 
sufferings of the prisoners. His attorney, Louis 
Schade, states that the condemned man, in the 
presence of Father Boyle, his confessor, said in 
reply to the offer, which was represented as coming 
from "a high cabinet officer": "Mr. Schade, you 
know I have always told you that I do not know 
anything about Jefferson Davis; he had no connec- 
tion with me as to what was done at Andersonville. 
If I knew anything of him, I would not become a 
traitor against him, or anybody else, to save my 
life." ' 

The scarcity of everything in the South in the 
way of food from the summer of 1862 lay behind 
the tragedies of its war-prisons. The Confederate 
army, save for its weapons and munitions of war, 
was in constantly necessitous straits. In January, 
1863, the daily ration of the private soldier was a 
quarter of a pound of beef, and one-fifth of a pound 
of sugar was ordered to be issued in addition, but 
there was no sugar.^ In the Shenandoah Valley, 
which had been the granary of the Confederacy until 
the execution of Grant's order that it should be so 
dealt with by the invading army as to compel "a 
crow ^ying over it to take his rations with him," 
the soldier's ration in March, 1863, had come to be 
eighteen ounces of flour and four ounces of indiffer- 

1 The Southern Side, p. 130. 

» 0. R. Series I, vol. XXI, p. 1110. 



DARK DAYS IN WAR-TIME 225 

ent bacon, with occasional and scanty issues of rice, 
sugar, and molasses. Scurvy indicated its appear- 
ance, and the regiments were directed to send men 
out to gather sassafras buds, wild onions, and gar- 
lic, to supply the deficiency of vegetables.^ 

The lack of clothing was as great as that of food. 
On January 19, 1863, twelve hundred pairs of shoes 
and four hundred or five hundred pairs of blankets 
were issued to men in D. H. Hill's division, who 
were without either. In a Louisiana brigade of 
fifteen hundred men, four hundred were barefooted. 
A large number had no underclothing or socks, and 
overcoats had come to be a curiosity. There were 
no cooking utensils.^ Suffering similar to that at 
Andersonville among the Federal prisoners pos- 
sessed the Confederate soldiers in the fields of Vir- 
ginia and along the banks of the Mississippi River. 

* Henderson, Jackson, II, p. 470, note 1; 0. R. Series I, vol. XXV, 
part 2, p. 687. 

2 0. R. Series I, vol. XXI, p. 1098; Henderson, Jackson, II, p. 
471, note 1. 



CHAPTER XVIII 
THE SUNSET OF THE CONFEDERACY 

Grant had now been put in command of all the 
Union armies, and his poHcy, based on superior 
man-power, was the logical one of attrition. Sheri- 
dan was harrying the Shenandoah Valley, and Sher- 
man was moving on Johnston at Dalton. The battles 
of the Wilderness, Spottsylvania Coml House, with 
its ^^ bloody angle, '^ and Cold Harbor were fought 
successively, with a loss to the Union side of sixty 
thousand men, a number equal to that of Lee's 
whole army. The end of the year found Grant in 
front of Richmond and Petersburg, and Lee defend- 
ing with thin ranks a line fifty miles in length.^ 

As the armies drew nearer the capital of the 
doomed Confederacy, Davis's visits to Lee, pre- 
viously made as often as his official duties permitted, 
came to be paid daily. The President leaned more 
and more, with the tragic developments of distress 
and disaster, upon the serene courage of his com- 
mander-in-chief. Mrs. Davis writes of him, in this 
crucial period, that he ^^had a childlike faith in the 
providential care of the Just Cause by Almighty 

1 Tyler, The South in the War, S. B. N., IV, pp. 516, 517; Memoir, 
II, p. 492. 

226 



SUNSET OF THE CONFEDERACY 227 

God, and a doubt of its righteousness never entered 
his mind," and she narrates that she often heard 
him in the night repeating to himself the Hues of 
the hynrn : 

"How firm a foundation, ye Saints of the Lord/' 

He possessed the characteristic of great optimism. 
Nervously sensitive, and a constant sufferer from 
a chronic neuralgic affection, with the keenest im- 
pressionability to adverse circumstance, his highly 
wrought organization was yet proof against despon- 
dency; and even when those about him had sur- 
rendered to apparent defeat, he kept a faith in final 
victoiy.^ His courage, undaunted even in extremity, 
was inspiring to those who immediately surrounded 
him. When at last the end was imminent, and 
visible to every one else, he proclaimed with sin- 
cerity: "We can conquer a peace against the world 
in arms, and keep the rights of freemen, if we are 
worthy of the privilege.'^ 

In the spring of 1864 his health again declined, 
and Mrs. Davis resumed her habit of taking his 
lunch to him at his office. On April 20 "I left my 
children," she writes, "playing in my room, and 
had just uncovered my basket, when a servant came 
for us. The most beautiful and brightest of my 
children, Joseph Emory, had in play climbed over 

^ Lee the American, pp. 50, 51. 



228 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

the connecting angle of a bannister, and fallen to 
the brick pavement below. He died a few minutes 
after we reached his side. This child was Mr. 
Davis's hope, and greatest joy in life. At intervals 
he ejaculated: ^Not mine, oh Lord, but thine!' 
A courier came with a despatch. He took it, held 
it open for some moments and looked at me fixedly, 
saying, ^Did you tell me what was in it?' I saw 
that his mind was momentarily paralyzed by the 
blow, but at last he tried to write an answer, and 
then called out in a heartbroken voice: 'I must 
have this day with my little child.' Somebody 
took the despatch to General Cooper, and left us 
alone with our dead." ^ 

Sherman, pressing against the Confederacy in 
Georgia, was met and checked at Kennesaw Moun- 
tain by Johnston, who fell back, fighting imtil he* 
reached Atlanta. Here there were important 
arsenals, foundries, and war -stores, and a further 
retreat by the Confederates would involve their 
loss. A public clamor arose for the removal of John- 
ston from his command. Davis removed him and 
appointed Hood in his place. Hood, reversing John- 
ston's tactics, attempted an aggressive poHcy against 
the invading enemy, and was driven back and finally 
compelled to abandon Atlanta. Marching North 
in December, 1864, with the purpose of cutting 
Sherman's connections, Hood was attacked by the 

1 Memoir, II, pp. 493, 494, 496, 497. 



SUNSET OF THE CONFEDERACY 229 

Federal forces under Thomas, in front of Nashville, 
and his army defeated. 

Sherman meantime was pursuing his "March to 
the Sea/' leaving in his wake a path of ruin and 
desolation forty miles wide, from Atlanta to Sa- 
vannah.^ West of the Mississippi, Dick Taylor 
and Kirby Smith defeated a Federal army under 
Banks and Porter at Sabine Cross-Roads, Louisiana, 
and the Confederate cavalry leader, Forrest, cap- 
tured Fort Pillow. 

Lee was now, under Davis's commission, in com- 
mand of all the armies of the South. He restored 
Johnston to the leadership of the shattered forces 
opposing Sherman in Georgia, where the conflict 
was drawing to a significant end. Fort Fisher, at 
Wilmington, which now remained the sole important 
accessible port to the blockade-runners, and through 
which nearly all the scanty supplies from abroad 
during 1864 came into the Confederacy, fell in Jan- 
uary, 1865, and the port was closed. Late in the 
same month and year Sherman crossed the Sa- 
vannah River and entered South Carolina. On 
February 17 his army burned Columbia.^ Charles- 
ton was abandoned by the Confederates, and Sher- 
man, marching northward through the Carolinas, 
was at Goldsboro, North Carolina, on March 20, 



'' Tyler, The South in the War, S. B. N., IV, pp. 517, 518; Short His- 
tory, chaps. LXVI and LXVII. 
2 Lee, The True Civil War, p. 369. 



230 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

1865, within one hundred and fifty miles of Grant's 
army in Virginia. 

Before the Confederate Congress met in Novem- 
ber, 1864, Benjamin took up with Davis the proposi- 
tion to free the slaves upon condition that they 
should enter the Southern armies and fight till the 
end of the war. The hope back of this scheme was 
that it might even at so late a day secure foreign 
recognition of the Confederacy, as well as furnish 
additional forces to the depleted man-power of the 
South. Davis, after serious consideration, recom- 
mended the measure to Congress; and the Rich- 
mond Enquirer advocated it earnestly as a "last 
alternative.'' ^ It was discussed by Congress 
throughout its entire session; but the passage of 
the act of Confederate emancipation was postponed, 
and finally occurred only three weeks before the 
evacuation of Richmond by the government. Even 
then its definitive enactment into law left it in the 
emasculated condition of providing that only such 
slaves should be freed as were tendered for military 
service by their owners. 

Stephens attacked the administration on the 
floor of the Senate, charging it with despotism, bad 
judgment, and incompetency; and asked that either 
Davis should be removed or that negotiations for 
peace should be opened with the Federal authori- 

1 William and Mary College Quarterly, xxv, pp. 9-12, "Kenner's 
Mission to Europe." 



SUNSET OF THE CONFEDERACY 231 

ties, without regard to the wishes of the Confederate 
President. Lee was approached and asked if he 
would agree to assume a position which would have 
been in effect that of dictator. He refused the 
proposition.^ 

Francis P. Blair came to Richmond in January, 
1865, and submitted to Davis a plan for compromis- 
ing the struggle between the sections by a union 
of the armies of the North and South, and a joint 
expedition into Mexico to uphold the Monroe Doc- 
trine by expelling Napoleon's Emperor MaximiHan 
from the Mexican throne. He suggested that Davis 
should lead the amalgamated armies, and that 
Mexico should be made a part of the reunited 
Union.2 The scheme was even more fantastic than 
had been that of the foreign war suggested by 
Seward at the beginning of the struggle.^ 

Blair had undertaken his mission with Lincoln's 
consent, but, as he disclosed to Davis, without of- 
ficial authority. Out of his visit came the "Hamp- 
ton Roads Conference." Davis gave Blair a letter 
stating that he stood ready to receive any commis- 
sion from the United States Government whose 
purpose was p^ace between "the two countries." 
Blair returned to Washington, and found the Presi- 
dent occupying his former attitude of willingness 

iDodd, Life, pp. 346-8. 

2 Rhodes, Histcyry U. S., V, pp. 58, 59; Alfriend, Life, pp. 605, 607. 
'Adams, Adams {S. S.), pp. 167, 168; Morse, Lincoln {S. S.), 
I, p. 277. 



232 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

to consider propositions which looked to the restora- 
tion of peace "to the people of our common coun- 
try." There was no equal ground for agreement 
between the executives. Blair went back to Rich- 
mond; hopeful and persistent, and again returned 
to the Federal capital, in the confidence of bringing 
about a "military convention. '^^ Davis appointed 
his poHtical antagonist, Stephens, with R. M. T. 
Hunter and Judge Campbell, commissioners for the 
purpose of meeting the Federal authorities. The 
conference was held in a little steamer in Hampton 
Roads, and Lincoln and Seward appeared in behalf 
of the United States. The meeting was informal, 
and took the shape of a desultory conversation, of 
which no official contemporary record was made. 
Stephens, in detailing what occurred, states that in 
the discussion of emancipation Lincoln said that he 
would be willing to be taxed to remunerate the 
Southern people for the loss of their slaves; that he 
beheved the people of the North were as responsible 
for slavery as the people of the South, and that if 
the war should then cease, with the voluntary aboli- 
tion of slavery by the States, he would be in favor 
individually of the government paying a fair in- 
demnity for the loss. He said he believed this feel- 
ing had an extensive existence at the North; "but 
on this subject, he said, he could give no assurance, 

1 Rise and Fall, II, pp. 612, 617; Alfriend, Life, p. 605; Stephens, 
Hist. U. S., Appendix R, No. 1, pp. 1002, 1003. 



SUNSET OF THE CONFEDERACY 233 

enter into no stipulation. He barely expressed his 
own feelings and views, and what he beheved to be 
the views of others on the subject." ^ 

Lincohi's conditions of a truce or suspension of 
hostilities were that the Confederate armies should 
be disbanded, and that the seceded States should 
submit to the Federal authorities. They were, in 
effect, terms of unqualified surrender. The Con- 
federate commissioners returned to Richmond, and 
Davis reported to Congress: ''The enemy refused to 
enter into negotiations with the Confederate States, 
or with any one of them separately, or to give to 
our people any other terms or guaranties than those 
which the conqueror may grant, or to permit us to 
have peace on any other basis than our uncondi- 
tional submission." ^ 

At the Hampton Roads Conference, which took 
place February 3, 1865, the commissioners learned 
of the passage by Congress of the Thirteenth 
Amendment, and its proposition to the several 
Northern States; and this fact they stated in their 

report.^ 

On the day on which he communicated to Con- 
gress the result of the conference, Davis addressed 

1 The War Between the States, II, p. 617; So. Hist. Soc. Papers, 

"^^uIFsages and Papers of the Confederacy,!, p. 519; So. Hist. Soc. 
Papers, Av, pp. 68-77; xxix, pp. 177-193; Julian S. Carr, The 
Hampton Roads Conference, pp. 1-36. 
» Alfriend, Life, pp. 612, 613. 



234 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

a popular meeting in Richmond; and by his eloquence 
aroused it to a demonstration of greater enthusiasm 
than on any similar occasion during the war.^ He 
expressed regret that the time was not one for the 
celebration of a victory, and added that a people of 
resolution would sacrifice all things for their coun- 
try. He said that his expectation from the begin- 
ning had been that peace would only come by vic- 
tory; but that the President of the United States 
had given him reason to think that a cessation of 
hostilities might result from a conference; and he 
had, therefore, appointed a commission, who were 
to consider no plan that was not founded on South- 
em independence, for he could never willingly give 
up the Confederacy. With it he was ready to live 
or die. 

He concluded: "Let us imite our hands and our 
hearts, and lock our shields together. We may well 
believe that before another summer solstice falls 
upon us, it will be the enemy who will be asking us 
for conferences and occasions on which to make 
known our demands." ^ 

Stephens, describing this speech of Davis's, says: 
"It was not only bold, undaunted and confident in 
its tone, but had that loftiness of sentiment and 
rare form of expression, as well as magnetic influence 
in its delivery, by which the passions of the masses 

iDodd, Life, pp. 352, 353; Alfriend, Life, p. 611. 
' Richmond Examiner, Feb. 7, 1865. 



SUNSET OF THE CONFEDERACY 235 

of the people are moved to their profoiindest depths, 
and roused to the highest pitch of excitement. 
Many who had heard this master of oratory, in his 
most briUiant displays in the Senate and on the 
hustings, said they never before saw Mr. Davis so 
really majestic." ^ 

On March 5, 1865, Assistant Secretary of War 
Campbell reported in detail to his department the 
depleted state of the treasury, and the lack of men, 
equipment, and provisions for the armies, and rec- 
ommended that Lee be requested to give his opinion 
of the condition of the country on these facts, and 
that the President be asked to lay the subject be- 
fore the Senate or Congress, and to invite their 
action. 

The Treasury Department, he said, was in debt 
from four to five hundred millions of dollars, and 
the service of all its bureaus was paralyzed by want 
of money and credit. The plight of the Confederate 
armies was equally bad. Reviewing the mihtary 
situation, he recalled that in April, 1862, conscrip- 
tion had been resorted to, and the men between 
eighteen and thirty-five called to the service. The 
campaign of that year had compelled the addition 
of the class between thirty-five and forty to the 
call of April. The campaign which ended in July, 
1863, with the loss of Vicksburg and the disaster of 
Gettysburg, made necessary a further call, which 

1 Stephens, Hist U, S., Appendix R, No. 1, p. 1011. 



236 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

included those between forty and forty-five. In 
February; 1864^ the Conscript Act was enlarged, 
and all white males between seventeen and fifty 
were made subject to service. At the same time 
the currency was reduced one-third by taxation, 
and heavy taxes were laid otherwise. 

In October, 1864, he continued, all details of men 
for particular service were revoked. ^^The casual- 
ties cannot be accurately ascertained, but enough 
is known to show that no large additions can be 
made from the conscript population." 

The States of North Carolina, South Carolina, 
and Georgia had passed acts to withdraw from ser- 
vice men liable to it under existing laws. The evil 
of desertion was one of "enormous magnitude.'^ 
The most productive parts of the country had been 
subjugated, other portions devastated, and the rail- 
roads destroyed. Agriculture had been diminished, 
and the quantities of supplies so reduced that under 
the most favorable circumstances subsistence for 
the army was uncertain and insufficient. 

Along with this communication, he delivered to 
his department chief, Breckinridge, a copy of the 
"Hampton Roads Conference" report, with an in- 
dorsement by Trenholm, secretary of the treas- 
ury, indicating the government's financial distress. 
Breckinridge, after the letter and documents had 
been presented to him, required reports from each 
bureau of his department, and Lee was requested to 



SUNSET OF THE CONFEDERACY 237 

report on the armies in the field. These reports, 
which generally confirmed Campbell's statements, 
were forwarded to the President, who submitted 
them in turn to Congress at one of its last meetings, 
about the middle of March, 1865. There was no 
discussion of them, and the Confederate lawmakers 
shortly afterward adjourned.^ 

Stephens, after the failure of the Hampton Roads 
Conference, abandoned hope and on February 9, 
1865, left Richmond for his home in Georgia, where 
he remained until he was arrested on May 11. 

^J. A. Campbell, Reminiscences, pp. 26-38. 



CHAPTER XIX 
DEPARTURE FROM RICHMOND AND CAPTURE 

On Sunday, April 2, 1865, the President was noti- 
fied by a despatch from Lee, which reached him 
while he was attending services at St. Paul's Church 
in Richmond, that the Confederate army was com- 
pelled to evacuate Petersburg. Leaving the church, 
he assembled his cabinet and arranged to leave the 
capital. In anticipation of the probable capture 
of the city, he had already sent his family, under 
the escort of his private secretary. Burton N. Har- 
rison, to Charlotte, North Carolina. On the day 
after receiving Lee's despatch, he left Richmond, 
with the members of the cabinet and many civil 
officers, who took with them the archives of the 
government. The train which carried them reached 
Danville, distant an ordinary three hours' journey, 
after a day and night of protracted travel. At 
Danville the government was estabhshed in new 
offices, and Davis issued a proclamation which was 
the last of his official publications. It was dated 
April 5, 1865, and illustrated his continued opti- 
mism and his still unbroken purpose to continue 
the conffict. 

"We have now entered upon a new phase of the 
struggle," he said. "Relieved from the necessity 

238 



DEPARTURE FROM RICHMOND 239 

of guarding particular points, our army will be free 
to move from point to point, to strike the en- 
emy in detail far from his base. Let us but will it, 
and we are free." He concluded this proclamation 
with the expression of his reliance upon God, and 
of a determination to meet the foe ^Vith fresh 
defiance, and with imconquered and unconquerable 
hearts." ' 

News came to him, on April 10, that Lee had 
surrendered at Appomattox. In a few hours, in 
order to escape the Federal cavalry which had threat- 
ened their retreat from the time of leaving Rich- 
mond, with his cabinet he again started southward 
on their slowly moving train. Next morning they 
reached Greensboro, where they spent two days, and 
on the afternoon of the 12th he held a conference 
with Johnston and Beauregard, at which his secre- 
taries, Benjamin, Breckinridge, Mallory, Reagan, 
and George Davis, were present. Consultation with 
the generals immediately disclosed their behef in 
the futility of protracting the struggle. 

Davis opened the conference by saying to John- 
ston: 

I have requested you and General Beauregard, General 
Johnston, to join us this evening that we might have the 
benefit of your views upon the situation of the country. 
Of course we all feel the magnitude of the moment. Our 

1 AKriend, Life, pp. 621-2; conf. Messages and Papers of the Con- 
federacy, I, p. 568. 



240 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

late disasters are terrible, but I do not think we should 
regard them as fatal. I think we can whip the enemy 
yet if our people will turn out. We must look at matters 
calmly, however, and see what is left for us to do. What- 
ever can be done, must be done at once. We have not 
a day to lose. 

There was no response from the generals, and 
Davis said to Johnston: 

We should like to hear your views, General Johnston. 

Johnston replied: 

My views are, sir, that our people are tired of war, feel 
themselves whipped, and will not fight. Our country is 
over-run, its military resources greatly diminished, while 
the enemy's military power and resources were never 
greater, and may be increased to any desired extent. We 
cannot place another large army in the field; and cut off 
as we are from foreign intercourse, I do not see how we 
could maintain it in fighting condition if we had it. My 
men are daily deserting in large numbers and are taking 
my artillery teams to aid their escape to their homes. 
Since Lee's defeat they regard the war as at an end. If 
I march out of North Carolina, her people will all leave 
my ranks. It will be the same as I proceed South through 
South Carolina and Georgia, and I shall expect to retain 
no man beyond the by-road or cow-path that leads to 
his house. My small force is melting away like snow be- 
fore the sun, and I am hopeless of recruiting it. We may, 
perhaps, obtain terms which we ought to accept. 

Davis then said : 

What do you say. General Beauregard? 



DEPARTURE FROM RICHMOND 241 

"I concur in all General Johnston has said," was 
the reply. 

It was thereupon determined to open negotiations 
with Sherman. Davis dictated a letter to the Fed- 
eral commander, containing a brief proposition for 
the suspension of hostilities, and suggesting a con- 
ference with a view to agreeing upon terms of 
peace. Johnston signed the note, took it, and the 
meeting ended. ^ 

Davis has written of this conference : 

I had never contemplated a surrender except upon 
the terms of a belligerent, and never expected a Con- 
federate army to surrender while it was able either to 
fight or to retreat. Lee had surrendered only when it 
was impossible for him to do either, and had proudly re- 
jected Grant's demand until he found himself surrounded, 
and his line of retreat cut off. I was not hopeful of negotia- 
tions between the civil authorities of the United States 
and those of the Confederacy; believing that, even if 
Sherman should agree to such a proposition, his govern- 
ment would not ratify it. After having distinctly an- 
nounced my opinions, I yielded to the judgment of my 
constitutional advisers, and consented to permit Johnston 
to hold a conference with Sherman.^ 

While Johnston and Sherman were negotiatmg, 
Davis's secretaries and the other friends who were 
with him urged him to look out for himself, in the 

^ Mallory's Narrative, quoted in Alfriend, Life, pp. 623-6. 
^Memoir, II, p. 621. 



242 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

probable event that negotiations should be un- 
successful. But he steadily refused the suggestion. 
He was determined against leaving the country, 
and continued to cherish the purpose of carrying 
on the war in the South, or in the southwest be- 
yond the Mississippi. On April 16, with his cabinet 
and staff, he left Greensboro to go farther south, 
"with plans unformed,'' says Mallory, "clinging to 
the hope that Johnston and Sherman would secure 
peace and the quiet of the country, but still all 
doubtful of the result, and still more doubtful as 
to consequences of failure.'' ^ 

He spent the night of the 16th at Salisbury, and 
on the 19th reached Charlotte. Here he received 
information by courier of the assassination of Presi- 
dent Lincoln. When he communicated the fateful 
news to those around him, "everybody's remark 
was, that in Lincohi the Southern States had lost 
their only refuge in their then emergency. Thgre 
was no expression other than surprise and regret," ^ 
and Davis himself said: "There are a great many 
men of whose end I would much rather hear than 
his. I fear it will be disastrous to our people, and 
I regret it deeply." ^ 

He remained at Charlotte nearly a week, and 
during his stay he received the terms of surrender 

1 Mallory's Narrative, Alfriend, Life, p. 626. 

2 Burton N. Harrison, Harrison of Skimino, The Capture of Jeffer- 
son Davis, p. 241. 

3 Mallory's Narrative, Alfriend, Life, p. 627. 



DEPARTURE FROM RICHMOND 243 

agreed upon between Johnston and Sherman. The 
members of his cabinet concurred in approbation 
of them. They were in the nature of a treaty of 
peace, based on the disbandment of the Confederate 
armies, the recognition of the existing governments 
of the Southern States upon their officials taking 
an oath of allegiance to the Federal Government, 
a re-establishment of all Federal courts under the 
Constitution, and a general amnesty. Three days 
later Davis was informed of the rejection of the 
terms by the Federal Government, and that no 
other terms of surrender would be considered than 
those accorded by Grant to Lee.^ 

Johnston surrendered, and Davis had no hope 
left of further resistance east of the Mississippi. 

Meanwhile the danger of his capture was immi- 
nent. Many men had refused to lay down their 
arms with the surrender of Lee and Johnston. 
Among them was Wade Hampton, who sought to 
detach his corps from Johnston's army in order to 
escort Davis to the Mississippi, but whom John- 
ston felt that he could not except from the capitula- 
tion.2 The spirit exhibited by these men encouraged 
Davis to believe that if he might cross the Missis- 
sippi, carrying with him such troops as would be 
willing to accompany him, he might yet join the 

1 Dodd, Life, p. 359; AKriend, Life, p. 627; Stephens, Hist. U. S., 
pp. 833, 835, where the 'Herms" are given in extenso. 

2 Dodd, Life, p. 360; Alfriend, Life, p. 628; So. Hist. Soc. Papers, 
xxvii, pp. 132-6. 



244 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

unsurrendered forces of Kirby Smith in a country 
of plentiful supplies^ and there continue a resistance 
which would bring favorable terms of final peace. ^ 

Davis's cheerfulness continued during his stay in 
Charlotte, in spite of adverse circumstances, and he 
said: '^I cannot feel like a beaten man !'' 

After a few days at Charlotte, he became anxious 
about his wife and family, who had gone farther 
south. He had heard nothing of them, and re- 
quested Burton Harrison, who had escorted them 
out of Richmond before the evacuation, to seek 
them in South Carolina, saying that they would 
probably be found at Abbeville. He added that 
Harrison must use his own judgment as to what 
course he should pursue, in the event that he over- 
took them, and that ^^for himself, he should make 
his way as rapidly as possible to the Trans-Missis- 
sippi Department to join the army under Kirby 
Smith." 2 

Harrison found Mrs. Davis, as Davis had ex- 
pected, at Abbeville. She insisted, upon his arrival, 
on starting without delay for the seaboard, bearing 
in mind her husband's injunction at parting in Rich- 
mond. "I had impressed upon her," he writes, 
"that she should not allow herself and our children 
to be captured, and afterwards wrote to her not to 



lAlfriend, Life, p. 628. 

2 Harrison of Skimino, The Capture of Jefferson Davis, pp. 243, 
244; The Century Magazine, November, 1883. _ 



DEPARTURE FROM RICHMOND 245 

delay anywhere but hasten on to the seacoast, and 
seek safety in a foreign country.'^ ^ 

Under Harrison's escort, her party left Abbeville 
before her husband's arrival there on May 3, and 
went on to Washington, Georgia. 

One by one, secretaries and generals had taken 
their departure, and gone their several ways. Ben- 
jamin, Mallory, Breckinridge, and Reagan stayed 
longest. Breckinridge departed upon Davis's ar- 
rival at Washington; Reagan alone now remained 
with his chief, and the two together, accompanied 
by ten trusty men, pushed forward, with the still 
unabandoned purpose of crossing the Mississippi. 

Before reaching Washington, Breckinridge and 
Reagan, still anxious for his safety, urged him to 
put on soldier's clothes, a wool hat and brogan 
shoes, and take one man with him, and go to the 
coast of Florida. There he might ship to Cuba, 
and sail thence by an English vessel to the mouth 
of the Rio Grande. 

"We proposed," writes Reagan, "to take what 
troops we still had, to go West, crossing the Chat- 
tahoochee, between Chattanooga and Atlanta, and 
the Mississippi River, and to meet him in Texas. 
His reply was: ^I shall not leave Confederate soil, 
while a Confederate regiment is on it.' " ^ 

1 Harrison of Skimino, The Capture of Jefferson Davis, note by- 
Davis, pp. 245, 246. 

2 Reagan, Memoirs, p. 212. 



246 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

Davis overtook Mrs. Davis's party, in charge of 
Harrison, near Dublin. In their journey they had 
turned off into a side road, and encamped on a 
piece of high ground in a pine wood. Here pickets, 
consisting of Harrison and the teamsters, were put 
out to guard the camp. About midnight the tread 
of horses was heard approaching from the north, 
and the two teamsters ran off to arouse the camp, 
under the apprehension that it was an attacking 
party of the enemy. Harrison remained in the 
road to detain the advancing squadron as long as 
possible, and as the horsemen drew near, he halted 
them with the demand: ''Who comes there?" The 
foremost rider replied in a voice which he at once 
recognized as that of Davis: "Friends." 

Accompanying him were Colonel William Pres- 
ton Johnston, Colonel John Taylor Wood, Colonel 
Frank R. Lubbock, Secretary Reagan, Colonel 
Charles E. Thorburn, and Davis's negro servant, 
Robert. Some of the party had heard in the after- 
noon, from the landlord of a country inn by the 
roadside, that an attempt was to be made that night 
to capture the wagons, horlses, and mules of a com- 
pany which seemed to be travelling in the direction 
of the seacoast; and the description led to the be- 
lief that it was Mrs. Davis's. Davis had thereupon 
determined to abandon his own route and overtake 
them. He writes that he could not learn what road 
his wife's party was taking. "We, however, started 



DEPARTURE FROM RICHMOND 247 

promptly in pursuit," he continues, "judging our 
direction to the eastward, and rode rapidly on, taking 
all easterly roads in search of one on which the wagon- 
tracks could be seen, until about midnight, when 
we came upon a large party, representing themselves 
to be paroled soldiers. They were about to cross 
a ferry, and as you [Harrison] had not been seen 
or heard of there, I turned then square to the east 
on a bridle-path which it was said would lead to 
a wagon-road in that direction; and here the cap- 
tain of my guard announced his horses too much 
exhausted to go any further. I could not wait, and 
started off; my staff and servant followed me. After 
riding eight or ten miles, I came upon your encamp- 
ment as described by you, having ridden without 
drawing rein an estimated distance of sixty miles. 
After travelling several days with you, I concluded 
we had gone far enough to the South and east to 
be free from the dangers of marauders, and resolved 
to resume my original route to the West, having 
with that view sent the captain of my guard and 
one of the men to reconnoitre to the West, so as to 
learn whether [there was] any expedition of the 
enemy in that direction." ^ 

Though he did not then know it, a price of one 
hundred thousand dollars was on his head by proc- 
lamation of the President of the United States. He 

1 Harrison of Skimino, Davis's note to The Capture of Jefferson 
Davis, p. 254. 



248 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

was under charge of having been identified with the 
criminal conspiracy of Booth and his associates, 
which had resulted in the murder of Lincoln and 
the mutilation of Seward. Handbills announcing 
the charge and the reward offered were in circula- 
tion, and General James H. Wilson, in command 
at Macon, had sent an order to General Upton, in 
command at Atlanta, on May 8, 1865, as follows: 

The President of the United States has issued his 
Proclamation that the Bureau of Military Justice has 
reported upon indubitable evidence that Jeff. Davis, 
Clement C. Clay, Jacob Thompson, George A. Sanders, 
Beverley Tucker, and W. C. Cleary, incited and con- 
certed the assassination of Mr. Lincoln and the attempted 
assassination of Mr. Seward. He therefore offers for the 
arrest of Davis, Clay, and Thompson $100,000 each; for 
Sanders and Tucker $25,000 each, and for Cleary $10,000. 
Publish this in handbills; circulate everywhere, and urge 
the greatest possible activity in the pursuit.^ 

But Davis, instead of contemplating escape, pos- 
sessed only two purposes when he went in search 
of Mrs. Davis, after leaving Washington. These 
were to find and protect his wife and children, and 
then to cross the Mississippi and join Kirby Smith 
in a final effort for the cause that was already ir- 
retrievably lost. 

Burton Harrison writes: ''Had Mr. Davis con- 
tinued his journey, without reference to us, after 

» 0. R. Series I, vol. XLIX, part 2. pp. 665, 666. 



DEPARTURE FROM RICHMOND 249 

crossing the Ocmulgee River, or had he ridden on, 
after getting supper with our party, the night we 
halted for the last time; had he gone but five miles 
beyond Irwinville, passing through that village at 
night and so avoiding observation, there is every 
reason to suppose that he and his party would have 
escaped either across the Mississippi, or through 
Florida to the sea-coast, as Mr. Benjamin escaped, 
as General Breckinridge escaped, and as others did. 
It was the apprehension he felt for the safety of his 
wife and children which brought about his capture.'^* 

He remained with Harrison that night and the 
night and day following, and on the morning of 
the second day, at Mrs. Davis's earnest sohcitation, 
left them to pursue their journey as best they might. 
He spent the night at Abbeville, and sent back a 
courier to inform Harrison that the enemy was 
twenty-five miles to the north, and to advise him 
to move on southward. 

Mrs. Davis's Httle party started in a terrific storm 
of thunder, lightning, and rain, and passed through 
Abbeville, where Harrison found Davis lying wrapped 
in a blanket on the floor of a deserted house. Davis 
urged him to hurry forward, promising to overtake 
him when the horses of his own party should be 
rested. The storm continued, and in the midst of 
it Davis again caught up with them. He remained 
with them until the afternoon, when it became neces- 

* Harrison of Skimino, p. 266. 



250 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

sary to stop near Irwinville to prepare food. Here, 
at the insistence of all his companions, he agreed 
that as soon as something to eat could be cooked, 
he would leave his wife and children for the last 
time, and press on for the trans-Mississippi. 

About daybreak, the negro coachman, James 
Jones, awakened Harrison with the call that the 
enemy was at hand. 

"I sprang to my feet,'^ writes Harrison, "and in 
an instant a rattling fire of musketry commenced 
on the north side of the creek. Almost at the same 
moment Colonel Pritchard and his regiment charged 
up the road from the south upon us." 

The surprised party fired no shots; yet in spite 
of Harrison's assurance to Pritchard, on hearing 
some firing, probably from the teamsters, that they 
had no armed escort, the Federal colonel gave the 
order to his troopers to charge. In a few minutes 
the Davis camp was apparently deserted, with no 
one in sight save a mounted Federal soldier near 
Mrs. Davis's tent, and a few troopers who stopped 
to plunder the wagons. Harrison saw Mrs. Davis 
come out of her tent and say something to the 
cavalryman. "Perceiving she wanted him to move 
off," he writes, "I approached, and actually per- 
suaded the fellow to ride away. As the soldier moved 
into the road, and I walked beside his horse, the 
President emerged for the first time from the tent, 
on the side farther from us, and walked away into 



DEPARTURE FROM RICHMOND 251 

the woods to the eastward, and at right angles to 
the road." ^ 

DaviS; instead of leaving earlier^ as he had deter- 
mined; had changed his purpose upon learning from 
Colonel Johnston that marauders were expected to 
attack the camp that night. ^'As they would prob- 
ably be, for the most part, ex-Confederate soldiers/' 
he writeS; "I thought they would so far respect me 
as not to rob the encampment of my family. In 
any event, or whoever they might be, it was my 
duty to wait the issue. My horse was saddled, 
hitched near to the road, and I was about to start, 
when the intelligence reached me of the intended 
attack. Still expecting to go on during the night, 
my horse remained saddled, my pistols within the 
holsters, and I lay down in my wife's tent, with all 
my clothes on, to wait for the arrival of the ma- 
rauders; but, being weary, fell into a deep sleep, 
from which I was aroused by my coachman, James 
Jones, telling me that there was firing over the creek. 
The idea with which I had fallen asleep was still 
in my mind, when, stepping instantly out of the 
tent, I saw the troopers deploying from the road 
down which they came, and immediately turned 
back to inform my wife that these were not the 
expected marauders, but were cavalry, having recog- 
nized them as such by the manner of their deploy- 
ment. The road was some distance to the west of 

1 Harrison of Skimino, pp. 255-8. 



252 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

the tent, and none of the soldiers were then near 
the tent. My wife urged me to leave immediately, 
the way being still open to the eastward. My horse 
and arms, however, were near to the road down 
which the assailants came, so that I must go on 
foot. As I started, the foreman of the deploying 
troopers advanced toward me and ordered me to 
halt, at the same time aiming his carbine at me 
and ordering me to surrender; to which I replied 
with angry defiance, and started toward him. My 
wife, who had been watching the whole proceeding, 
rushed after me and threw her arms aroimd my 
neck. Whether it would have been possible for 
me to have escaped the trooper's fire, and get his 
horse by a very sudden movement, it was quite 
certain that an instant's delay, with the hurrying 
approach of other troopers, rendered the case hope- 
less; I therefore walked back with my wife to her 
tent, and passed on, without entering it, to the fire 
in the rear of it, where I sat down, as the morning 
was chilly. I do not think I went fifty feet from 
the tent-door, and so far from Colonel Pritchard 
having a sentinel stationed there, the one truth he 
told, so far as I know, was that he was not aware 
of my presence in the encampment until some time 
after its captm-e. Subsequent revelations sufficiently 
showed that the object of the expedition was to 
capture the wagons supposed to be laden with that 
hypothetical gold of the Confederate Treasury." 



DEPARTURE FROM RICHMOND 253 

Harrison says: "I had been astonished to dis- 
cover the President still in the camp when the at- 
tack was made. What I learned afterward explained 
the mystery. Wood and Thorburn tell me that 
after the President had eaten supper with his wife, 
he told them he should ride on when Mrs. Davis 
was ready to go to sleep; but that when bedtime 
came, he finally said that he would ride on in the 
morning, — and so, spent the night in the tent. He 
seemed to be entirely unable to apprehend the dan- 
ger of capture. Everybody was disturbed at this 
change in his plan to ride ten miles farther, but he 
could not be got to move." ^ 

On the morning following his capture, Pritchard 
handed Davis, who now learned for the first time 
of the charge against him of being Booth^s accom- 
plice, a copy of the printed handbill offering one 
hundred thousand dollars for his capture. He "read 
it with a composure unruffled by any feeling other 
than scorn." 

The reward offered was twice the amoimt of that 
offered for the capture of Booth. 

Four days later the prisoners and their captors 
reached Macon, where the fallen Confederate Presi- 
dent was placed under guard on a train to be 
transported to Augusta and thence to Fortress 
Monroe. 

The work of plundering the camp was begun as 

1 Harrison of Skimino, pp. 259, 260, 263. 



254 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

soon as it was captured. A trunk belonging to Mrs. 
Davis was broken open, and a hoop-skirt and other 
articles of woman's apparel taken from it, whose 
appearance furnished the suggestion for the state- 
ment that Davis had attempted to escape in his 
wife's clothing; and the stolen clothes were carried 
North and preserved as trophies.^ Harrison says 
of the Confederate leader's alleged disguise when 
captured: ^'It was as yet scarcely daylight. The 
President had on a waterproof cloak. He had 
used it when riding, as a protection against the 
rain diu-ing the night and morning preceding that 
last halt; and he had probably been sleeping in 
that cloak at the moment when the camp was 
attacked." ^ 

Circulation was given to the mendacious and 
silly story, originated by a sensational newspaper 
correspondent, through Wilson's official report to 
Stanton of May 14, in which he stated that he had 
derived it from the captors. Colonel Pritchard, 
however, made no mention of it in his published 
official report and correspondence. It appealed to 
the morbid pubhc appetite of a wide-spread belief 
in the North that Davis was connected with the 
Lincoln assassination. The Northern papers were 
full of it. Stanton wrote to Robert J. Breckinridge 

1 0. R. Series II, vol. VIII, pp. 570, 571. 

^Harrison of Skimino, pp. 259-266; Memoir, II, pp. 631-646; 
Short History, pp. 494, 495; Alfriend, Life (Mallory), pp. 633, 634; 
Pollard, Life, pp. 523, 524. 



DEPARTURE FROM RICHMOND 255 

that ^^ Jefferson Davis was caught three days ago 
in Georgia, trying to escape in his wife^s clothes/' ^ 
and on May 23 Charles A. Dana, assistant secre- 
tary of war, ordered General Miles to direct Colo- 
nel Pritchard to bring with him ^Hhe woman's dress 
in which Jefferson Davis was captured." ^ 
/ In an interview at Macon between Davis and 
(General Wilson, says Walthall: "General Wilson 
abruptly and rather indelicately introduced the 
subject of the reward offered by the President of 
the United States for the arrest of Mr. Davis, and 
the charge against him of complicity in the assas- 
sination of Mr. Lincoln, inquiring whether he had 
heard of it. ^I have,' was the answer, ^and there is 
one man who knows it to be a lie.' 'By one man,' 
rejoined Wilson, 'I suppose you mean some partic- 
ular man.' 'I do,' answered Mr. Davis, 'I mean 
the man (Andrew Johnson) who signed the procla- 
mation ; for he knew that I would a thousand times 
rather have Abraham Lincoln to deal with as Presi- 
dent of the United States than to have him.' It 
was said with full expectation that it would be re- 
peated." ^ 

Possibly Davis's opinion of Johnson was softened, 
as were those of the Southern people generally, by 

1 0. R. Series II, vol. VIII, p. 563. 

^Ihid., II, vol. VIII, p. 569; Va. State Bar Asso. Rep., vol. 
XIII, The Trial and Trials of Jefferson Davis, pp. 233, 234. 

3 W. T. Walthall, The Capture of Jefferson Davis, So. Hist. Soc. 
Papers, V, pp. 97-118. 



256 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

the President's subsequent attitude of a fearless 
defender of the defeated Southerners against the 
programme of the Northern radicals to humiliate 
and oppress them under the Reconstruction Acts. 



CHAPTER XX 
IMPRISONMENT AND TRIAL 

Davis was sent from Macon to Savannah, and 
thence was transported under a heavy guard on 
the steamer Clyde, convoyed by the Federal sloop- 
of-war Tuscarora, to Fortress Monroe. 

The Clyde arrived at the fortress on May 19. 
General Nelson A. Miles had been appointed to 
take charge of the post and of the captured Con- 
federates, and awaited their coming. They con- 
sisted of Jefferson Davis, Alexander H. Stephens, 
John H. Reagan, Clement C. Clay, Joseph Wheeler, 
WiUiam Preston Johnston, F. R. Lubbock, Burton 
N. Harrison, and one or two subaltern officers.^ 
Stephens and Reagan were sent on to Fort Warren, 
at Boston, and Wheeler, Johnston, and Lubbock to 
Fort Delaware. Burton Harrison was taken to 
Washington and confined in the old capitol prison, 
while the captured women and children were re- 
turned to the South. 

Dana went to Fortress Monroe to look after the 
incarceration of Davis and Clay. He reported on 
May 22 that they were safely confined. 

1 0. R. Series II, vol. VIII, p. 558. 
257 



258 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

The arrangements for the security of the prisoners 
seem to me as complete as could be desired. Each one 
occupies the inner room of a casemate. The window is 
heavily barred. A sentry stands within before each of 
the doors leading into the outer room. These doors are 
to be grated, but are now secured by bars fastened on 
the outside, and the key is kept exclusively by the general 
officer of the guard. Two sentries are also stationed with- 
out that door. A strong line of sentries cuts off all access 
to the vicinity of the casemates. Another line is stationed 
on the top of the parapet overhead, and a third line is 
posted across the moats on the counterscarp opposite the 
places of confinement. The casemates on each side and 
between those occupied by the prisoners are used as guard 
rooms, and soldiers are always there. A lamp is con- 
stantly kept burning in each of the rooms. . . . 

Later, on the same day, Dana gave Miles written 

instructions, in the name of the secretary of war, 

as follows: 

r" , . . . -^ 

/ Brevet-Major-General Miles is hereby authorized and 

directed to place manacles and fetters upon the hands 

and feet of Jefferson Davis and Clement C. Clay, when- 

lever he may deem it advisable in order to render their 

•imprisonment more secure.^ 

Miles, on May 24, informed Dana: ^'Yesterday 
I directed that irons be put on Davis's ankles, 
which he violently resisted, but became more quiet 
afterward." 2 The newspapers circulated the story, 

1 0. R. Series II, vol. VIII, p. 564. 

Ubid., II, vol. VIII, p. 571; Prison Life, pp. 33-43. 



IMPRISONMENT AND TRIAL 259 

and the Northern people failed to receive it with 
approval. On May 28 Stanton telegraphed Miles 
from Washington: "Please report whether irons 
have or have not been placed on Jefferson Davis. 
If they have been, when it was done, and for what 
reason, and remove them." Miles replied: "I have 
the honor to state in reply to your despatch that 
when Jeff. Davis was first confined in the case- 
mate, the inner doors were light wooden ones with- 
out locks. I directed anklets to be put upon his 
ankles, which would not interfere' with his walk- 
ing, but would prevent his running, should he en- 
deavor to escape. In the meantime I have changed 
the wooden doors for grated ones with locks, and 
the anklets have been removed. Every care is taken 
to avoid any pretense for complaint, as well as to 
prevent the possibility of his escape." ^ 

On the same day General Halleck, commanding 
the Military Division of the James, with head- 
quarters at Richmond, issued the following order 
to Miles: 

Jeff Davis and C. C. Clay having been confined in 
Fort Monroe by order of the Secretary of War, communi- 
cated through me, they will be removed from that place 
only on orders from the same source, communicated in 
the same way. No writs or orders of any civil courts 
will be recognized or obeyed.^ 

1 0. R. Series II, vol. VIII, p. 577. 

2 Ibid., II, pp. 577, 578. 



260 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

The prisoner was allowed to see, write, or talk 
to no one. His fare was that which was furnished 
from the kitchen of the guard, and his linen was 
dealt out to him by the major-general commanding, 
to whom that function had been assigned by Gen- 
eral Halleck.^ Books, papers, and correspondence 
were luxuries which were deemed by the Federal 
authorities inconsistent with public safety, and were 
prohibited.^ Late in the summer of 1865 books 
and newspapers were allowed the prisoner. 

On January 30, 1866, after the Northern press 
had commented adversely and severely on the treat- 
ment of the Confederate prisoners at Fortress Mon- 
roe, the secretary of war ordered that thirty-six 
dollars a month be paid "for furnishing the prisoners, 
Davis and Clay, with such food as they require, 
and for the payment of the laundresses who do their 
washing." The day after this elaboration of diet, 
the daily report states that Davis "suffered more 
than usual from dyspeptic symptoms." ^ 

Charles O^Conor, of New York, a leader of the 
American bar, wrote June 2, 1865, to Davis, ten- 
dering his services as counsel. After the interchange 
of communications between the military authorities 
at Fortress Monroe and Washington in regard to 
furnishing Davis with pen, ink, and paper in order 



»0. R. Series II, vol. VIII, p. 1565. 
2 Ibid., II, vol. VIII, pp. 570, 915-919. 
» Ibid., II, vol. VIII, pp. 874, 875. 



IMPRISONMENT AND TRIAL 261 

that he might reply to 0' Conor, writing materials 
^'sufficient for the specific purpose of accepting or 
declining Mr. O'Conor's offer'' were directed to be 
supplied him.^ 

At the time of the incarceration of Davis and 
Clay in Fortress Monroe the belief was genuine 
and wide-spread at the North that they were im- 
plicated in Lincoln's assassination. In consequence 
of this belief, and of the announced result of Judge- 
Advocate Holt's investigations into the alleged 
conspiracy, it was the original intention of the 
government to cause their trial by a military com- 
mission on that charge. The Judiciary Committee 
of the House of Representatives was directed to 
examine into the charge which was formulated by 
Holt,2 and Colonel L. C. Turner, of the Bureau of 
Military Justice, was detailed to aid the committee 
in ascertaining the facts. The witnesses to be ex- 
amined were those whose depositions had been ob- 
tained by the judge-advocate general. Turner pro- 
ceeded, in discharge of the work to which he was 
detailed, to examine with industry and intelligence 
into the character and conduct of these accusing 
witnesses. His investigation disclosed that the 
whole business, in which Conover was the leader, 



1 0. R. Series II, vol. VIII, p. 642; Ibid., II, pp. 655-8. 

* Ibid., II, vol. VIII, pp. 856 ff. See the depositions of witnesses on 
which the charge was founded, set out in Holt's report. 0. R. Series 
II, vol. VIII, pp. 815, 847-861. 



262 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

was a conspiracy to deceive- Holt for the purpose 
of obtaining money from the government. 

"Sanford Conover/^ wrote Turner in his report, — 
'^his true name is Dunham; lawyer by profession, 
formerly lived at Croton, then in New York and 
Brooklyn; a very shrewd, bad and dangerous man. 
William Campbell — his true name is Joseph A. 
Hoare, a gas-fixer by trade; born in the State of 
New York, and never south of Washington. Joseph 
Snevel — his true name is William H. Roberts, for- 
merly ticket agent on Harlem railroad, then kept 
tavern at Yonkers, &c.; was never south. Famum 
B. Wright — true name John Waters; is lame in 
the knee; works in a brick yard near Cold Spring, 
on Long Island, &c. John H. Patten — true name 
Peter Stevens; lives at Nyack near Piermont, on 
the North River; is now a justice of the peace there. 
Sarah Douglass and Miss Knapp — the true name 
of one is Dunham, who is the wife of Conover; the 
name of the other is Mrs. Charles Smythe, is the 
sister or sister-in-law of Conover, and lives at Cold 
Spring, Long Island; her husband is a clerk on 
BlackwelFs Island. McGill — his name is Neally; he 
is a licensed pedlar in New York, and sometimes 
drives a one-horse cart." 

Turner's report concludes: "My investigation 
and the disclosures prove (undoubtingly in my 
mind) that the depositions made by Campbell, 
Snevel, Wright, Patten, Mrs. Douglass and others 



IMPRISONMENT AND TRIAL 263 

are false; that they are cunningly devised, diabol- 
ical fabrications of Conover, vexified by his sub- 
orned and perjured accompHces." ^j 

Holt withdrew the depositions, and made a report 
setting out his correspondence and interviews with 
Conover and the others, and seeking to demonstrate 
that he was not to blame for believing them.^ Con- 
over was arrested and taken to Washington for 
trial. He told Turner that his motive in organizing 
and conducting the conspiracy was a desire to avenge 
himself on Davis, on whose order he had been con- 
fined in Castle Thunder, the Confederate prison in 
Richmond, and who had, besides, "insulted his 
wife." He was indicted under his real name of 
Charles A. Dimham for perjury, was tried in 1867, 
convicted, and sentenced to ten years' imprison- 
ment in the Albany Penitentiary.^ 

"Mr. Thaddeus Stevens," wrote Judge Shea, 
in his letter to the New York Tribune of January 
15, 1876, "on May, 1866, related to me how the 
Chief of this Military Bureau showed him ' the evi- 
dence' upon which the proclamation was issued 
charging Messrs. Davis and Clay with complicity 
in the assassination of Mr. Lincoln. He said he 
refused to give the thing support, and that he said 
the evidence was insufficient and incredible. I am 

1 0. R. Senes II, vol. VIII, pp. 921 ff. 

2 Ibid., II, vol. VIII, pp. 931 ff. 

3 Blackford, Fa. State Bar Asso. Repts., XIII, p. 246; Dev/itt, As- 
sassination of Abraham Lincoln, p. 173. 



264 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

not likely ever to forget the earnest manner in which 
Mr. Stevens then said: 'Those men are no friends 
of mine. They are public enemies; but I know 
these men, sir. They are gentlemen, and incapable 
of being assassins.* '* ^ 

The charge was abandoned and that of treason 
was substituted.^ Davis was indicted for treason 
at its May term, 1865, by the United States Court 
at Norfolk, presided over by Judge John C. Under- 
wood, a New York abohtionist who had settled 
in Virginia before the war. The district attorney 
moved for a bench-warrant, which Underwood re- 
fused. This indictment was lost during the sunmier 
of 1865 and never again came to light. 

An indictment on the same charge was found 
against him in the District of Columbia; but no 
process, issued upon it, was ever served, and it was 
abandoned.^ 

In January, 1866, it was recommended by the 
attorney-general and the secretary of war that Davis 
should properly be tried in Virginia, where Chief 
Justice Chase was to preside; but Chase declined 
to hold court there during the continuance of mar- 
tial law in the South.^ He was finally indicted for 
treason on May 10, 1866, in the circuit court of 

^Memoir, II, pp. 788, 789; Dewitt, Assassination of Abraham 
Lincoln, p. 288, note 1; Rhodes, History, V, p. 158, note. 

2 Dewitt, Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, pp. 173, 174. 

3 Blackford, Va. S. B. Asso. Reports, XIII, p. 247. 
*Hart, Chase (S. S.), p. 352. 



IMPRISONMENT AND TRIAL 265 

the United States for the District of Virginia; and 
on June 5 James T. Brady, of New York, William 
B. Read, of Philadelphia, and James Lyons and 
Robert Ould, of Richmond, appeared in court as his 
counsel. Read inquired if the case was to be tried, 
and claimed the constitutional right of speedy and 
pubHc trial. On the following day the attorney 
for the government read a paper to the court, in 
which he stated that Davis was not in the custody 
of the court, and was beyond its control; that the 
district attorney was so much engaged with official 
duties that he could not attend ; and that the prisoner 
himself was too unwell to stand a long trial at that 
time of the year. Brady, on behalf of his client, 
waived the plea that Davis was not in custody of 
the court, and insisted on a speedy trial. Under- 
wood stated that the chief justice was to preside 
at the trial, and could not be present until the 
October term. The case was then continued to 
that term. 

On June 7, 1866, Charles O'Conor and Thomas 
G. Pratt, ex-governor of Maryland, representing 
the prisoner, and Speed, the attorney-general, on 
behalf of the government, waited on Chief Justice 
Chase, at his residence in Washington, to ascertain 
if he would entertain a motion to admit Davis to 
bail. Chase stated that he would not act until the 
writ of habeas corpus was restored and military 
law had ceased in the South. An appHcation for 



266 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

bail was later made to Underwood, in the attorney- 
general's office in Washington, and refused by him. 
The President, the chief justice, the attorney-gen- 
eral, and the circuit judge all professed a desire to 
grant the prisoner's release, but each found some 
alleged constitutional objection.^ 

No court was convened at Richmond for the 
October term, to which the case had been ad- 
journed; and it was not until May, 1867, that 
the prisoner was brought into court. 

Doctor Craven, Davis's prison physician, had 
reported to Miles, under date of September 2, 1865, 
that ^^ prisoner Davis" was in a feeble condition, 
which he attributed to the dampness of his case- 
mate, and suggested a change.^ In consequence 
of the physician's letter "prisoner Davis" was re- 
moved in October, 1865, to a much better room in 
"Carroll Hall" in the fortress, and was in every 
respect more comfortable than he had been in the 
casemate.^ 

On April 25, 1866, Mrs. Davis, whose letters to 
officials in regard to her husband's health remained 
unanswered, hearing that he was failing rapidly, 
telegraphed to President Johnson for permission 
to see him. The request was referred to the secre- 
tary of war, who ordered the general commanding 

1 Blackford, Va. S. B. Asso. Repts,, XIII, p. 251; Hart, Chase 
(S. S.), pp. 352, 353. 

2 Craven, Prison Life, pp. 235, 236. 

3 lUd., p. 281; Blackford, Va. S. B. Asso. Repts., XIII, p. 257. 



IMPRISONMENT AND TRIAL 267 

the fortress to permit Mrs. Davis to visit her hus- 
band, under such restrictions as might be consistent 
with the safety of the prisoner.^ 

Davis's health grew worse, and his attorneys 
continued their efforts to obtain either the release 
of their client on bail or the determination of a day 
for his trial ;^ and at length, when Underwood opened 
the May term, 1867, of the court at Richmond, 
Shea filed a petition on his behalf for a writ of habeas 
corpus. The writ was granted and served on Gen- 
eral Henry S. Burton, then commanding at Fortress 
Monroe. On May 13, 1867, Davis appeared in 
court, accompanied by his counsel, Charles 0' Conor, 
William B. Read, George Shea, John Randolph 
Tucker, Robert Ould, and James Lyons. The 
government was represented by William M. Evarts, 
the attorney-general, and by Mr. Chandler, the 
district attorney. 

George Davis, the ex-attorney-general of the 
Confederacy, wrote to his son two days later from 
Richmond: '^Mr. Davis, though looking better 
than I expected, is only the shadow of his former 
self, but with all his dignity and high, unquenchable 
manhood. As he entered the densely crowded court- 
room, with his proud and lofty look, every head 
reverently bowed to him, and a stranger would 

1 0. R. Series II, vol. VIII, pp. 900, 901. 

2 Blackford, Va. S. B. Asso. Reports, XIII, pp. 256-262; Hart, 
Chase (S. S.), pp. 352, 353. 



268 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

have sworn that he was the judge and Underwood 
the culprit.'' ^ 

In the presence of an audience which included 
among others Generals Schofield and Granger, Gen- 
eral Burton and Doctor Cooper, and a number of 
prominent Southerners, 0' Conor announced that 
the defense was ready and desired a trial. The 
attorney-general objected to a trial at that term, 
and the court sustained the objection. A motion 
to admit the prisoner to bail was made and granted. 
The bail-bond, in the penalty of one hundred thou- 
sand dollars, was signed among others by Horace 
Greeley, Gerrit Smith, and Cornelius Vanderbilt 
of New York.2 

When the bond had been executed, the Federal 
marshal, having Davis in custody under the writ, 
was directed by the court to discharge the pris- 
oner, and this was done, "amidst deafening ap- 
plause." 

The question whether secession, which had been 
taught to Davis as a constitutional principle at 
West Point, when he was a cadet, might be construed 
as treason in the application of its penalties to him 
as a prisoner in 1865, in Fortress Monroe, early 
engaged the attention of the legislative branch of 
the government. In December, 1865, a joint reso- 
lution of Congress provided for a committee of the 

iDodd, Life, p. 370, and note (1). 

2 Blackford, Va. S. B. Asso. Repts., XIII, p. 265. 



IMPRISONMENT AND TRIAL 269 

two Houses to ^^ inquire into the condition of the 
States which formed the so-called Confederate States 
of America, and report whether they or any of them 
are entitled to be represented in either house of 
Congress; with leave to report at any time by bill 
or otherwise." ^ 

As incident to this investigation by the com- 
mittee, which reported against the '^so-called Con- 
federate States" being then allowed representation 
in the Congress of the United States, the possibility 
of convicting Davis of treason upon a trial in Vir- 
ginia was inquired into.^ Among the ten witnesses 
called was Robert E. Lee. He testified in part as 
follows: 

Question : Do you think it would be practicable to con- 
vict a man in Virginia of treason for having taken part 
in this rebellion against the government, by a Virginia 
jury, without packing it with direct reference to a ver- 
dict of guilty? 

Answer : On that point I have no knowledge, and I 
do not know what they would consider treason against 
the United States. If you mean past acts — 

Mr. Howard : Yes, sir. 

Witness : I have no knowledge of what their views 
on that subject in the past are. 

Question : You understand my question : Suppose a 
jury was empanelled in your own neighborhood, taken up 
by lot; would it be practicable to convict, for instance, 

1 Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, p. iii. 

2 Ibid., pp. vii to xxii, 



270 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

Jefferson Davis for having levied war upon the United 
States, and thus having committed the crime of trea- 
son? 

Answer : I think it is very probable that they would 
not consider that he had committed treason. 

Question : Suppose the jury should be clearly and plainly 
instructed by the court that such an act of war upon the 
United States on the part of Mr. Davis, or any other lead- 
ing man, constituted in itself the crime of treason under 
the Constitution of the United States; would the jury be 
likely to heed that instruction, and if the facts were plainly 
in proof before them, convict the offender? 

Ansiver : I do not know, sir, what they would do on 
that question. 

Question : They do not generally suppose that it was 
treason against the United States, do they? 

Ansiver : I do not think that they so consider it. 

Question : In what light would they view it ? What 
would be their excuse or justification ? How would they 
escape in their own mind? I refer to the past. 

Answer : I am referring to the past, and as to the feel- 
ings they would have. So far as I know, they look upon 
the action of the State, in withdrawing itself from the 
government of the United States, as carrying the indi- 
viduals of the State along with it; that the State was 
responsible for the act, not the individual. 

Question : And that the ordinance of secession, so- 
called, or those acts of the State which recognized a con- 
dition of war between the State and the general govern- 
ment, stood as their justification for their bearing arms 
against the government of the United States? 

Answer : Yes, sir. I think they considered the act 
of the State as legitimate; that they were merely using 
the reserved right which they had a right to do. 



IMPRISONMENT AND TRIAL 271 

Question : State, if you please, (and if you are dis- 
inclined to answer the question, you need not do so), 
what your own personal views on that question were? 

Answer : That was my view; that the act of Virginia, 
in withdrawing herself from the United States, carried 
me along as a citizen of Virginia, and that her laws and 
her acts were binding on me. 

Question : And that you felt to be your justification 
in taking the course you did ? 

Answer : Yes, sir.^ 

Chase apparently shrank from sitting in judg- 
ment upon the question of Davis's treason, and 
Doctor Hart says of the constantly deferred trial 
that "it was plain that the Chief Justice had no 
heart in the prosecution, that the administration 
would not urge it, and that Northern men saw 
no advantage in making a martyr of the President 
of the Confederacy," ^ and it is known that Lincoln 
gave it to be understood, after the fall of Richmond, 
that he did not desire that Davis and some of the 
other Confederate leaders should be captured, but 
wished that they might be allowed to escape from 
the country.^ 

The United States Circuit Court convened in 
Richmond for its November term, 1867, and Attor- 
ney-General Evarts asked that the case be post- 

^ Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, part II, p. 
133. 

2 Hart, Chase (S. S.), p. 353. 

3 Morse, Lincoln (S. S.), II, pp. 237, 238. 



272 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

poned until the following March, to suit the con- 
venience of the chief justice. Davis's counsel 
announced themselves ready for trial, and de- 
manded it, but consented to the delay in order to 
have Chase on the bench at the trial. ^ 

After he had been released from his prison in 
Fortress Monroe in May, 1867, Davis proceeded 
with his wife to Canada to rejoin their children, 
who were in the Dominion under the charge of Mrs. 
Davis's mother and sister; and they remained in 
Montreal during the summer. Mrs. Davis writes of 
him at this time: '^We had httle, and my husband's 
health was apparently hopelessly gone. His ema- 
ciation was very great, and long imprisonment had 
left him with a lassitude very noticeable to those 
domesticated with him." ^ His health, however, 
improved in the Canadian summer, and under the 
influence of association with James M. Mason and 
other Confederate friends whom he visited at Niagara 
and Toronto. While in Canada, the idea came to 
him to write a history of the Confederacy; and he 
sent for his letter-books and message-books, ^^ which 
had been secretly taken from their place of con- 
cealment" after his departure from Richmond, 
and conveyed North to be deposited in the Bank 
of Montreal. A casual inspection of their contents 
caused him to delay this work to a later day, when 

1 Blackford, Va. Asso. Repts., XIII, p. 267. 

2 Memoir, II, pp. 796, 797, 



IMPRISONMENT AND TRIAL 273 

he might write the epic story of the Rise and Fall 
of the Confederate Government with greater calmness 
'^than he could feel in their contemplation then."^ 

A new mdictment was found against him on 
March 26, 1868, charging him on various '^counts" 
with many acts of treason, among which was that 
of ''conspiring with Robert E. Lee, J. P. Benjamin, 
John C. Breckinridge, WilHam Mahone, H. A. Wise, 
John Letcher, WilHam Smith, Jubal A. Early, James 
Longstreet, Wmiam H. Payne, D. H. Hill, A. P. 
Hill, G. T. Beauregard, W. H. C. Whiting, Ed. 
Sparrow, Samuel Cooper, J. B. Gordon, C. T. Jack- 
son, F. 0. Moore, and with other persons whose 
names are to the grand jury unknown,'' to make 
war against the United States; and with other high 
crimes and misdemeanors. The grand juries which 
found the indictments were composed of whites 
who could take "the test oath,'' and of recently 
emancipated negro slaves. 

Again the case was continued, and from term 
to term, until on December 3, 1868, the final trial 
of the former President of the Confederacy began. 
Davis sat at the bar behind his counsel, much im- 
proved in health since his last appearance in the 
same room, when the abolitionists Greeley and 
Gerrit Smith had signed his bail-bond; and the 
chief justice of the United States presided. Under- 
wood was at Chase's side; but the arguments of 

^Memoir, II, pp. 798, 799. 



274 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

counsel were addressed to the chief justice. Of 
Davis's numerous volunteer attorneys, those who 
appeared for him on this occasion were Charles 
0' Conor, William B. Read, Robert Ould, and James 
Lyons. The government was represented by the 
new district attorney, S. Ferguson Beach, and by 
Richard H. Dana, Jr., of Boston, and Henry H. 
Wells, a New Yorker who had been appointed mili- 
tary governor of Virginia. The attorney-general 
was detained by official duties which ^^ rendered it 
impossible for him to be present." A motion was 
made to quash the indictment, which was argued 
at length. 

Davis's counsel, upon the motion to quash, con- 
tended that the accused was included in the opera- 
tion of the Fourteenth Amendment which had just 
gone into effect, and that the penalties therein enu- 
merated took the place of any previously incurred 
penalties for treason. The third section of the 
amendment, which was that rehed on, is: "No 
person shall be Senator or Representative in Con- 
gress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or 
hold any office, civil or military, under the United 
States, or under any State, who having previously 
taken an oath as a member of Congress, or as an 
officer of the United States, or as a member of any 
State legislature, or as an executive or judicial 
officer of any State, to support the Constitution of 
the United States, shall have engaged in insurrec- 



IMPRISONMENT AND TRIAL 275 

tion or rebellion against the same, or given aid or 
comfort to the enemies thereof; but Congress may, 
by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such 
disability/' 1 

Before tendering the motion to quash, Ould had 
filed in open court his own affidavit, that on Decem- 
ber 8, 1845, Jefferson Davis had qualified as a mem- 
ber of the United States House of Representatives 
by taking an oath 'Ho support the Constitution." 
Chase was of opinion to sustain the motion to quash 
on the ground assigned by the accused^s counsel, 
but Underwood voted against it; and upon the 
division, the motion failed. The fact of the dis- 
agreement was certified to the supreme court for 
decision, and the case was again continued to the 
May term, 1869. Before the term arrived, Andrew 
Johnson made his general amnesty proclamation, 
which was held to cover Davis's case; and on 
February 15, 1869, the two indictments for treason 
were dismissed by an order declaring that "the 
District Attorney, by leave of the court, saith that 
he will not prosecute further on behalf of the United 
States against the above named parties upon sepa- 
rate indictments for treason." 

The undetermined motion certified to the supreme 
court was never called for trial by that tribunal. 
In the February following the dismissal of the in- 
dictments in the circuit court, an order was en- 

* Const. U. S.f Amendment XIV, sec. 3. 



276 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

tered, reciting that inasmuch as the indictments 
had been dismissed, Davis and his bondsmen were 
forever released.^ 

The order of dismissal, stating that the govern- 
ment would "not prosecute further," was consented 
to by Davis's coimsel, after consultation among 
themselves, and in his absence. His attitude in 
favor of a trial had always been uncompromising 
and persistent.^ 

1 Blackford, Va. State Bar Asso. Repts., XIII, pp. 268-273. 
* Southern Hist. Soc. Papers, xxxviii, pp. 347-9. 



CHAPTER XXI 
LAST YEARS 

The coercion of the seceded States by the Federal 
Government in 1861 was sought to be justified on 
the ground that secession was unconstitutional, and 
that the people of these States, which were still in 
the Union, were in rebellion. 

On March 2, 1867, however. Congress enacted 
that the States of the late Confederacy should be 
divided into military districts and placed under 
military rule. On March 23, 1867, a supplemental 
act was passed, completing the plan of reconstruc- 
tion. These acts annulled the State governments 
then in existence, enfranchised the negroes, and 
disfranchised all who had taken part in the war 
against the Union, whether pardoned or not, if they 
had previously held any executive, legislative, or 
judicial office under State or Federal Government, 
or had '^ given aid to the enemies of the Union." 
They provided for the calling of conventions, the 
framing and adopting of State constitutions, and 
the election of State officers by the new electorate; 
and authorized the machinery necessary to create 
and operate the new governments in order that 

277 



278 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

the military districts might again become parts of 
the United States.^ 

From this legislation sprung a social, political, 
and economic orgy in the South, sordid and debased 
beyond expression, whose evils were infinitely worse 
than had been all the woes of war. 

The colder climate of Canada, whither Davis had 
gone after his release from prison, proved too rig- 
orous for his enfeebled constitution, and he was ad- 
vised to spend the winter of 1867 elsewhere. Sail- 
ing for New Orleans by way of Havana, he arrived 
with his family in Cuba just before Christmas, where 
he remained for a week, and thence went to New 
Orleans. Here he met with a welcome even warmer 
than that which had greeted him upon his trium- 
phant return twoscore years earlier from the victori- 
ous battle-fields of Monterey and Buena Vista. He 
found his property gone and his friends impover- 
ished. Several of his old negroes came to see him 
during his stay in New Orleans, and he paid a 
visit to others of them at Davis Bend, where he 
beheld a scene of desolation in the destruction of 
Hurricane and Briarfield by the occupation of the 
Federal armies. 

While in New Orleans he met with a severe ac- 
cident, and the continued decline of his health 
caused his physician to prescribe a visit of a year 
to Europe. In England he and his family had many 

lAct of March 2, 1867; Act of March 23, 1867. 



LAST YEARS 279 

invitations extended to them, and were the recipi- 
ents of numerous civilities. Under the influence of 
new surroundings and cheerful company, his health 
improved; and ^^by the winter, when we removed to 
London,'' writes Mrs. Davis, "he began to look less 
like a skeleton, and of his own choice to walk about 
and take more interest in affairs around him."^ 

He visited Paris for a few weeks, and there he 
had an agreeable reunion with SHdell, and was in- 
vited by the Emperor and Empress to Court and 
to mass in the imperial chapel. But Davis remem- 
bered the conduct of Napoleon the Third in the 
matter of recognition, and declined to see him. 
"Even then," writes Mrs. Davis, who accompanied 
him to the French metropohs, "the shadow of the 
bloody drama that was to end the dynasty of the 
Bonapartes hung over Paris, and the blue blouses 
talked treason in the Musee de Napoleon, and hissed 
out between their teeth abuse of the army officers 
as they passed." ^ 

He returned to London, where he frequently 
saw his former secretary of state, who had been 
the author of many of the Confederate President's 
messages to Congress; and who, now a Queen's 
counsel, and on the way to the leadership of the 
English bar, had illustrated Hebraic genius and 
perseverance under three governments.^ Still in 

1 Memoir, II, p. 808. 2 Memoir, II, pp. 809, 810. 

3 Butler, Benjamin, p. 326. 



280 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

poor health, he left Paris in company with Doctor 
Charles Mackay, the Scottish poet and editor, and 
visited Scotland. Here his health improved per- 
ceptibly; but he recovered his depleted strength 
only partially, and never again was robust.^ 

In the autumn of 1869 he was offered the presi- 
dency of a life-insurance company at Memphis, 
Tennessee, which the necessity of earning a liveli- 
hood for himself and his family compelled him to 
accept. Leaving them in London, he went to Mem- 
phis, where he remained for some months, and then 
returned to London to fetch them back to America. 
On the eve of his departure from London he re- 
ceived by cable news of the death of his brother 
Joseph, to whom he was deeply attached, and whose 
loss came to him as a great sorrow.^ 

The citizens of Memphis, upon his arrival, offered 
him, for a gift, a handsome residence as an expres- 
sion of their good-will; but he preferred to be the 
recipient of no donations, however freely and gen- 
erously offered, and gratefully declined to accept it. 
He appHed himself diligently, though probably un- 
successfully, to learning the science and technicali- 
ties of the life-insurance business. His training and 
experience had not been along such lines, and he 
later discovered that his company was not organ- 
ized and conducted on a safe basis. "After put- 
ting everything he could command into the stock 

^Memoir, II, p. 811. ^ Ibid., II, p. 811. 



LAST YEARS 281 

to save it, the company, he found, must fail, as 
the yellow-fever made the Southern risks alone too 
great for profit.'^ ^ 

With its failure was lost the small remnant of his 
meagre fortune, and troubles thickened about him. 
The death of his brother had caused both the plan- 
tations at Davis Bend to be thrown into litigation 
for the satisfaction of liens with which they were 
encumbered. His httle son William was stricken 
with diphtheria, just before the collapse of the in- 
surance company, and died.^ Of his family there 
now remained his wife, his older daughter, Margaret, 
who had married Mr. J. A. Hayes, and a boy and 
girl, Jefferson and "Winnie.'' Out of the wreck of 
the Hurricane and Briarfield suits a portion of his 
old plantation was saved to him; and from the 
lands where he had started life as a planter, after 
his eight years' service in the United States army, 
he now hoped to support himself and his family. 
But his health grew worse, and again he was ordered 
to England. His visits abroad had the effect of 
distracting his attention from a too constant con- 
templation of the past; and after some pleasant 
months spent in the agreeable society of Lord 
Campbell and Mr. Beresford-Hope in England, and 
of his old friend and commissioner, A. D. Mann, 
in Paris, he returned home in somewhat improved 
condition. 

1 Memoir, II, pp. 812, 813. ^Bodd, Life, p. 373. 



282 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

Pursued by vicissitudes and worn with harsh ex- 
perience and increasing age, his courage continued 
dauntless and unbroken, and he looked about him 
again for the means of making a livelihood. Boun- 
tiful gifts of houses and lands and money might have 
been his for the acceptance; but his pride was as 
fine-edged as his courage. The people of Texas 
invited him to visit that State after the death of 
his little son in 1874; and upon much urging he 
went. They met him with welcoming acclaim, 
and offered to give him a tract of land and stock 
enough to furnish it; but again, as in the case of 
the Memphis residence, he declined the proffered 
gift.^ 

In July, 1862, an act had been passed by the 
Congress giving the President power to proclaim 
a general amnesty. In 1867 a bill was enacted de- 
priving the President of that right, though Andrew 
Johnson denied the power of Congress to restrict 
his constitutional authority, and continued to issue 
proclamations of pardon. On May 22, 1872, a 
general amnesty bill was passed, excepting, how- 
ever, from its operations about seven hundred and 
fifty ex-Confederates, who had before 1861 held 
civil or military positions under the government.^ 
To become a beneficiary of its provisions, it was 
necessary that appHcation should be made for tiie 

* Memoir^ II, p. 815. 

2 Johnston, Am. Politics, pp. 212, 228. 



LAST YEARS 283 

removal of the prescribed disabilities. Davis, while 
accepting in good faith the results of the war, de- 
clined to ask pardon for an offense of which he 
denied that he was guilty. 

"In asserting the right of secession/' he reiterates, 
in the concluding chapter of his Short History of 
the Confederate States, a condensation of the Rise 
and Fall, which was published in the year follow- 
ing that of his death, "it has not been my wish 
to incite to its exercise. I recognize the fact that 
the War showed it to be impracticable, but this 
did not prove it to be wrong; and now that it may 
not be again attempted, and that the Union may 
promote the general welfare, it is needful that the 
truth, the whole truth, should be known, so that 
crimination and recrimination may forever cease; 
and then, on the basis of fraternity and faithful 
regard for the rights of the States, there may be 
written on the arch of the Union, Esto Perpetua,'' ^ 

On March 3, 1879, the bitterness of past years 
again surged about him in a debate in the United 
States Senate upon an amendment to the bill for 
pension arrears to soldiers in the Mexican War. 
The amendment provided that "no pension shall 
ever be paid under this act to Jefferson Davis, the 
late President of the so-called Confederacy,'' who 
had not asked to be included in the provisions of 
the bill, or desired to be pensioned by the govern- 

» Memoir, II, pp. 829, 830; Short History, pp. 504, 505. 



284 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

ment.^ The Senate passed the amendment by a 
vote of twenty-three to twenty-two, after a debate 
which rekindled the passions of the period antedat- 
ing the war. The unconscious subject of the acri- 
monious discussion had; in the meantime, been 
bending his energies toward the development of a 
trade between South America and the United 
States, through the organization of an international 
enterprise which might build up New Orleans and 
the cities of the lower South. He visited England 
in pursuit of this project; but, says Doctor Dodd, 
"as in the days of his magnificent fight for the 
Southern Pacific Railway, the combined energies of 
Northern capital and New England enterprise were 
against him," ^ ^nd the scheme came to naught. 

This was the last of his larger plans in life, and 
he began to look about him for some quiet though 
humble place where he might end his days in the 
peace and seclusion which had been denied him 
since his earliest years at Briarfield. He selected a 
location on the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, about 
half-way between Mobile and New Orleans, and 
renting one of the cottages in the yard of ''Beau- 
voir," the residence of Mrs. Sarah A. Dorsey, he 
engaged board for himself, and for his family when 
they should be with him, put up in it shelves for 

1 Debate on Pensioning Jeff Davis, condensed from the Proceed- 
ings of the U. S. Senate, March 3, 1879. 

2 Life, pp. 374, 375. 



LAST YEARS 285 

his books and papers, and settled himself to the 
composition of his history of the Confederacy. 

In April, 1878, Mrs. Davis, who had accompanied 
him to Europe on his last visit abroad, joined him 
at '^Beauvoir," and with the clerical assistance of his 
wife and of Mrs. Dorsey, and the literary aid of his 
friend. Major W. T. Walthall, and of Judge Tenney, 
whom his publishers sent down to assist him, he 
completed the book at the end of three years. 

Its composition was interrupted by the death 
of his sole surviving son, Jefferson, who died at 
Memphis of yellow fever; and later Mrs. Dorsey 
succumbed to the same malady. In anticipation 
of her death, she had asked Davis some time before 
to agree to act as her executor. He had objected 
on the score that he was old and could not very 
well administer any fiduciary trust; but when she 
persisted, he consented in the belief that the trust 
would be of an eleemosynary character. After her 
death, the will disclosed that she had devised ^'Beau- 
voir" to him during his life, with reversion to his 
youngest daughter, "Winnie," then a minor. 

His history did not prove remunerative; but he 
said that he had not undertaken it as a matter of 
pecuniary profit. He was satisfied if the end should 
be gained by it of showing the motives of the South 
to the world. ^ 

Soon after the book's completion he and Mrs. 

^Memoir, II, pp. 827-830; Dodd, Life, pp. 376, 377, 



286 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

Davis went again to Europe to meet their young 
daughter, who had been at school in Germany, and 
was then with friends at Paris. They remained in 
Paris three months, and he spent the greater part 
of his time there with his friend, A. D. Mann, at 
Chantilly. Here, too, he again saw Benjamin, " older, 
but the same cheerful buoyant person," as Burton 
Harrison describes him in the Capture, It was his 
last meeting with his former secretary, and when 
the visit was ended, he returned to take up his life 
again at "Beauvoir." ^ 

About this time he was offered by a representa- 
tive of the Louisiana State Lottery a salary of ten 
thousand dollars a year, to do for a magazine which 
the Lottery's managers proposed to issue "what 
Curtis does for Harpers, only the opposite; namely, 
press the charter-rights of the States again to the 
front." He saw beneath the glittering and seduc- 
tive offer its real significance, and refused it.^ 

His long imprisonment in Fortress Monroe, which 
had sapped a vitaHty never abundant since his young 
manhood, and the courage with which he had faced 
conflict and defeat, created a kindHer feeling for 
him among those in the South who had been his 
least lenient critics, and kindled anew the affection 
and admiration of those who had remained his 
friends. The publication of his history of the Con- 
federacy augmented this sympathy, and developed 

1 Memoir, II, p. 831. » Dodd, Life, p. 380, note 2. 



LAST YEARS 287 

a renewed confidence in him on the part of the people 
for whom he had borne a great burden. In 1886 
he made a number of pubHc addresses in Mississippi, 
Alabama, and Georgia, and was met everywhere 
with expressions of kindness and affection such as 
no other speaker had ever received.^ 

The more than "threescore years and ten" of 
the Hebrew psalmist lay heavy upon him, and the 
last of these "homecomings to his people," at Ma- 
con, Georgia, was too much for his weakened vital- 
ity. His physician forbade him further excitement, 
and he returned to Beauvoir, to appear no more in 
pubHc. He went to Briarfield in November, 1889, 
and was there taken ill. His sickness prevented his 
reaching home before the end, and with his wife, 
who had joined him on his way down the Missis- 
sippi, he could go no farther than New Orleans, 
where he died, December 6, 1889. 

From all over the South representative men and 
women hastened to attend the obsequies of the 
dead leader. The Grand Army of the Republic 
joined in the funeral ceremonies with the camps 
of Confederate veterans, and the citizens of New 
Orleans thronged to his burial in Metairie Ceme- 
tery. The governors of nine^States were his pall- 
bearers, and the legislatures of the Commonwealths 
which he had led in war held memorial sessions in 
his memory .2 

1 Dodd, Life, p. 381. » Dodd, Life, pp. 381, 382. 



288 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

Thornton Montgomery, of the race whose servi- 
tude had been the proximate cause of the '^ irre- 
pressible conflict/^ sent Mrs. Davis a note of sym- 
pathy. He was a successful and prosperous son of 
Joseph E. Davis's old servant, Ben Montgomery, 
on the plantation at Davis Bend, and was then 
living in Dakota. 

"Miss Varina," he wrote, "I have watched with 
deep interest and solicitude the illness of Mr. Davis 
at Briarfield, his trip down on the steamer Leathers, 
and your meeting and returning with him to the 
residence of Mr. Payne at New Orleans; and I had 
hoped that with good nursing and superior medical 
skill, together with his great will-power to sustain 
him, he would recover. But, alas! for human en- 
deavor, an overruling Providence has willed it other- 
wise. I appreciate your great loss, and my heart 
goes out to you in this hour of your deepest afflic- 
tion. 

"Would that I could help you bear the burden 
that is yours today. Since I am powerless to do 
so, I beg that you accept my tenderest sympathy 
and condolence." ^ 

Four years after his death the people of Rich- 
mond asked that his body might be entombed, in 
the company of many other soldiers and states- 
men of the South, in Hollywood Cemetery. Jeffer- 
son Davis was borne back to the scene of his great 

1 Memoir, II, p. 934. 



LAST YEARS 289 

adventure, the capital of what had once been the 
Confederate States of America. His body lay in 
state in the chief cities through which it passed, 
and tens of thousands came to gaze on the face, 
that was still resolute and undaunted in death. ^ 
j He had been the leader ot eleven confederated 
Commonwealths. He had organized and led against 
overwhelming odds for four years a resistance which 
achieved great victories, and compelled the ad- 
miration of the civilized world for the genius of its 
captains and the valor and self-sacrifice of its citizen 
soldiers, who fought for the vindication of what he 
and they believed to be the rights of the sovereign 
and independent States under the Federal Con- 
stitution, which the States had created and adopted^ 

1 Dodd, Life, pp. 382, 383. 



CHAPTER XXII 
PERSONALITY AND CHARACTER 

No man of modern times has been more diversely 
estimated both by his contemporaries and by those 
who have come later than has Davis. Yet with 
these varying estimates, Schuckburgh's statement 
concerning Cicero, in his preface to the Letters, 
is equally applicable to the Confederate President: 
"Though he will still, as he did in his lifetime, ex- 
cite vehement disapproval as well as strong ad- 
miration, he will never, I think, appear to any one 
dull or uninteresting." ^ James Redpath, who was 
an abolitionist and a lifelong political opponent, 
but who knew him well personally^ and was familiar 
with his history, writes of him:! "There are two 
Jefferson Davises in American history, — one is a 
conspirator, a rebel, a traitor, and the 'Fiend of 
Anderson ville,' — ^he is a myth evolved from the 
hell smoke of cruel war — as purely imaginary a 
personage as Mephistopheles or the Hebrew Devil; 
the other was a statesman with clean hands and 

^ The Letters of Cicero, translated into English by Evelyn S. 
Schuckburgh, M.A., p. v. 

290 



PERSONALITY AND CHARACTER 291 

pure heart, who served his people faithfully from 
budding manhood to hoary age, without thought 
of self, with unbending integrity, and to the best 
of his great ability; — he was a man of whom all his 
countrymen who knew him personally, without 
distinction of creed political, are proud and proud 
that he was their countryman.'^ ^ j 

This diversity of opinion, which has existed among 
some of the people whom he governed, and among 
many who opposed him in the struggle between 
the sections, is illustrated primarily in the former 
case by the two biographies of him written by 
Southern authors immediately after the war. Pol- 
lard's Life, with its sub-title, A Secret History of 
the Confederacy^ published in 1869, is a chronique 
scandaleuse, which, while conceding to its subject 
both patriotism and courage, charges him with 
favoritism, exaggerated self-esteem, and gross in-^ 
competency, and holds him personally responsible 
for the failure of the Confederacy. That of Al- 
friend, pubHshed in 1868, is partisan in its com- 
mendation, and represents the extreme views of 
those who were Davis's warmest friends and ad- 
mirers. 

His qualities and personal characteristics, no less 
than the circumstances of his tragic career, conduced 
to create these antagonistic contemporary opinions 
of him, which the lapse of time has served to crys- 

» Memoir^ II, p. 936. 



292 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

tallize into two fixed and diverse estimates. A dis- 
tinguished Northern writer said of him in 1898: 
"The moral difference between Benedict Arnold on 
the one hand, and Aaron Burr or Jefferson Davis 
on the other, is precisely the difference that obtains 
between a politician who sells his vote for money 
and one who supports a bad measure in considera- 
tion of being given some high political position.'' ^ 
Three years before his death Henry W. Grady in- 
troduced him to an audience at Atlanta, Georgia, in 
language which did not exaggerate the regard in 
which he had then come to be held by most of the 
people for whom he had spent himself, and whose 
"Lost Cause" he t3rpified. 

"It is good, sir," said Grady, addressing him, "for 
you to be here. Other leaders have had their tri- 
umphs. Conquerors have won crowns, and honors 
have been piled on the victors of earth's great bat- 
tles; but never, sir, came man to more loving people. 
Never conqueror wore prouder diadem than the 
deathless love that crowns your gray hairs today. 
Never king inhabited more splendid palace than the 
millions of brave hearts in which your dear name 
and fame are forever enshrined. Speaking to you, 
sir, as a son of a Confederate soldier who sealed his 
devotion with his life, — ^holding kinship through the 
priceless heritage of his blood to you and yours, — 
standing midway between the thinning ranks of his 
1 Roosevelt, Thomas H. Benton (S. 5.), p. 145. 



PERSONALITY AND CHARACTER 293 

old comrades, whose faltering footsteps are turned 
toward the grave and the new generation thronging 
eagerly to take the work that falls unfinished from 
their hands, — here, in the auspicious present across 
which the historic past salutes a glorious future, let 
me pledge you that the love we bear you shall be 
transmitted to our children and our children's chil- 
dren, and that generations yet unborn shall in this 
fair land hold your memory sacred, and point with 
pride to your lofty and stainless life. 

^^My countrymen '' (turning to the audience), ^'let 
us teach the lesson in this old man's life, that defeat 
hath its glories no less than victory. Let us declare 
that this outcast from the privileges of this great 
government is the uncrowned king of our people, 
and that no Southern man, high or humble, asks a 
greater glory than to bear with him, heart to heart, 
the blame and the burden of the cause for which he 
stands unpardoned. In dignity and honor he met 
the responsibilities of our common cause. With 
dauntless courage he faced the charges. In ob- 
scurity and poverty he has for twenty years borne 
the reproach of our enemies and the obloquy of 
defeat. This moment . . . finds its richest reward 
in the fact that we can light with sunshine the 
shortening end of a path that has long been dark 
and dreary. Georgians, countrymen, soldiers and 
sons of soldiers, and brave women, the light and 
crown and soul of our civilization, rise and give 



294 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

your hearts voice, as we tell Jefferson Davis that he 
is at home among his people.'^ ^ 

In the core of Grady's rhetorical eloquence lay 
the secret of much of the enmity and of the affec- 
tion which divided themselves over the Confederate 
leader. "The blame and the burden" of his advo- 
cacy and concrete support of secession made for 
him his bitterest enemies and his most admiring 
friends; and the conflicting judgments of those who 
antagonized and those who supported a constitu- 
tional interpretation, finally condemned by the arbit- 
rament of arms, not unnaturally fastened them- 
selves upon its most conspicuous representative. 

To the man himself, with the healing of poHtical 
passions and the softening of personal asperities 
through the lapse of time, history must accord the 
possession of many noble quahties. Mr. Gamahel 
Bradford has written of him: "He had pluck, splen- 
did pluck, moral and physical. It was indeed, I 
imagine, rather pluck of the high-strung, nervous 
order than the cool, collected calmness of Lee or 
Grant. There again is the difference of types. 
Nevertheless, Davis's pluck is beyond question. 
He had consistency, too, knew his ideas and stuck 
to them, had persistency. ^He was an absolutely 
frank, direct and positive man,' said General 
Breckinridge, And he was sincere in his purposes, 
as well as consistent. ^As God is my judge, I never 

1 Hill, Life of Benjamin H. Hill; pp. 226, 227. 



PERSONALITY AND CHARACTER 295 

spoke from any other motive (than conviction)/ he 
told Seward. Beyond question he told the truth. 
He was unselfish, too, thoughtful of others, and 
ready to make sacrifices for them. ^He displayed 
more self-abnegation than any other human being 
I have ever known,' says one of his aides, and the 
statement is abundantly confirmed"; and the same 
writer characterizes him as an ''able, briUiant, noble 
figure. '' ^ 

His quahties of both head and heart were aflSrma- 
tive and aggressive. There was nothing negative 
or indifferent in his character. Extreme both in 
his attachments and in his antagonisms, he was a 
profoundly loyal friend and a relentless enemy. 
Out of these extremes of opinion and feeling sprung 
his most obvious faults. ''He was severe in his 
judgment of those whom he disliked, and slow to 
perceive or to suspect a fault in those he loved and 
trusted. If once his confidence was shaken, how- 
ever, from whatever cause — well-grounded or imagi- 
nary — he was prone to pass to the other extreme, 
that of entire distrust.'' ^ The tenacity of his 
friendship is illustrated by his continued confidence 
in more than one of his generals who proved unsuc- 
cessful commanders, and by his sturdy adherence to 
Northrop, his commissary-general, whose unfortu- 
nate struggle with adverse economic conditions re- 

^ Bradford, Lee the American, pp. 49, 50, 69. 
2 Walthall, Davis, p. 47. 



296 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

suited in the attempt of his enemies to remove him 
from office, which Davis prevented. In the expres- 
sion of his opinion, even to those whom he beheved 
he had ground for condemning, he was unhesitating 
and relentless to a degree that sometimes bore the 
appearance of arrogance. On one of Joseph E. 
Johnston^s letters to General Cooper, in relation 
to orders issuing from "the Headquarters of the 
Forces,'^ containing the statement: "Such orders I 
cannot regard, because they are illegal," he wrote 
"insubordinate"; and to another, in which Johnston 
argued at length the alleged injustice of the rank to 
which he had been assigned by the President, Davis 
replied: "Its language is, as you say, imusual; its 
arguments and statements utterly one-sided, and 
its insinuations as unfounded as they are unbecom- 
ing." 1 

Yet that he bore no malice on account of his 
disagreement with Johnston is indicated in Mrs. 
Davis's statement: "In the whole period of his offi- 
cial relation to General Johnston, in the confidence 
of family intercourse, I never heard him utter a 
word in derogation of General Johnston, though he 
often differed from him in his views of military 
strategy." ^ 

Sometimes, imder strong provocation, the ex- 
pression of his opinion was violent. "Driveling on 
possibilities," he writes Beauregard, whom he re- 

1 Memoir, II, pp. 140, 142-154. ^ Memoir, II, p. 155. 



PERSONALITY AND CHARACTER 297 

garded as possessing some of the characteristics of 
a dreamer.^ 

But with all his directness of speech and sternness 
of criticism, he was innately courteous and consid- 
erate of the feelings of others, and his readiness to 
acknowledge himself in the wrong when convinced 
of it marked a high moral courage. In a debate 
in the Senate in 1858 Benjamin took umbrage at 
Davis^s disparagement of a statement which he had 
made. The Mississippian retorted that the Senator 
from Louisiana had attempted ^Ho misrepresent a 
very plain remark. '^ Benjamin challenged Davis to 
fight, and Bayard, of Delaware, delivered the note. 
Davis read it and tore it up, saying: "I will make 
this all right. I have been wholly wrong.'' Thomas 
F. Bayard, writing of the incident, says that Davis 
"walked back to his desk in the Senate, and on the 
first opportunity rose and made the most distinct 
withdrawal of what he had said, and regretted any 
offense most amply. No one in the Senate but my 
father knew what had called forth from Davis this 
apology, for Benjamin had sat down in silence when 
Davis had made the rude interruption." ^ 

Mr. Bradford's comment on this episode is the 
mistaken one that "kind friends prevented the 

* 0. R., vol. II, [p. 508. In the Rise and Fall of the Confederate 
Government, this word is " dwelling " instead of " driveling." Con- 
federate Portraits, note 51, ch. IV, p. 274. 

2 Butler, Benjamin, pp. 177, 178; Bradford, Confederate Portraits, 
p. 143. 



298 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

future Secretary of State from shooting at his 
President"; but Davis's conduct was uninfluenced 
by anything save his own magnanimity. '^More 
seriously instructive and profitable/' adds the com- 
mentator, ^'is the contrast between the explanations 
offered by the two men to the Senate. Davis's is 
in his best vein, nobly characteristic, as thoroughly 
frank as it is manly and dignified. Benjamin's is 
well enough, but cautious, as if he were afraid of 
his position, and anxious not to say a word too 
much." 1 

His subsequent relations with Benjamin as attor- 
ney-general and secretary of state were of the most 
cordial and confidential character, and the Louisi- 
anian remained his most trusted friend and coun- 
sellor to the end. 

After the discordant elements of his cabinet had 
withdrawn in the earHer period of the war, he was 
stanchly supported against a hostile Congress by 
those members who remained and by the new- 
comers. Reagan, Breckinridge, Trenholm, and 
George Davis, all men of character and ability, pos- 
sessed and retained his confidence and continued 
faithful to his fortunes to the last. 

With Stephens, the Vice-President, he had dis- 
agreed on many subjects of public policy, and the 
Georgian's antagonism to Davis's administration 
had been avowed and open. But their personal 

1 Confederate Portraits, p. 143. 



PERSONALITY AND CHARACTER 299 

relations remained friendly, and Stephens, after the 
Hampton Roads Conference, giving up all hope of 
the Confederacy, parted with him in utmost kindli- 
ness. ^'It was then," Stephens writes, "that I 
withdrew from Richmond. My last interview with 
Mr. Davis, before leaving, was after my thus declin- 
ing to address the meetings proposed. He inquired 
what it was my purpose to do. I told him that it 
was to go home and remain there. I should neither 
make any speech, nor even make known to the 
public in any way my views of the general condition 
of affairs, but quietly abide the issues of fortune, 
whatever they might be. Differing as we did at 
that time upon these points as we had upon others, 
we parted in the same friendship which had on all 
occasions marked our personal intercourse." ^ 

No higher tribute to Davis's personal character 
and to his conduct as President of the Confederacy 
could have been paid than by the undeviating 
friendship and confidence of Lee. Not long after 
the close of the war, Lee wrote to Early: "I have 
been much pained to see the attempts made to cast 
odium upon Mr. Davis, but do not think they will be 
successful with the reflecting or informed portion of 
the country, "2 and he spoke to Gordon admiringly 
of him, commending "the strength of his convic- 
tions, his devotion, his remarkable faith in the pos- 

^ History of the United States, Appendix R, p. 1011. 

2 R. E. Lee, Jr., Recollections and Letters of Gen. R. E. Lee, p. 220. 



300 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

sibility of still winning our independence, his un- 
conquerable will-power. ' ' ^ 

Henderson, in his Stonewall Jackson, states that 
^4t can never be known to what extent his (Lee's) 
designs were thwarted by the Confederate Govern- 
ment/' and addS; ^'Lee served Mr. Davis; Jack- 
son served Lee, wisest and most helpful of mas- 
ters." The intimation is that Davis thwarted 
Lee's plans; but, although the two men sometimes 
differed in their estimates of the general officers of 
the army, as illustrated in their correspondence 
relative to Hood,^ there appears to be no instance 
in which Davis, whom "Lee served," interfered 
with the military plans of his commander-in-chief. 

Davis's relations with the men who were his offi- 
cial advisers, and generally with those who were his 
commanders in the field, vindicate the statement 
that "he had a keen insight into human character, 
and his estimate of men was in general just and 
sagacious.'^ ^ 

In the Mexican War he exhibited under limited 
opportunity some of the best qualities of the soldier 
and military leader. He was diligent in preparation, 
prompt and energetic in movement, resourceful in 
expedient, and valorous in battle. When, after the 
secession of Mississippi, he had been put in com- 
mand of its forces, he felt that it was a position 

^ J. B. Gordon, Reminiscences, p. 393. 

2 Lee's Dispatches, pp. 282, 284. ^ Walthall, Life, p. 47. 



PERSONALITY AND CHARACTER 301 

which he was competent to fill; and there is little 
doubt, whatever might have proven to be his skill 
and ability as the commander of an army in the 
field, that he would have preferred the command 
of the Confederate armies to occupying the office 
of President. Yet, with this confidence in his own 
military ability, though constitutional commander- 
in-chief of the army and navy, "it was his policy . . . 
not to interfere with the operations of his generals 
in the field, unless under circumstances of extreme 
necessity; and although sometimes present in time 
of action, we believe he never personally assumed 
command on any occasion, a rare exercise of for- 
bearance in a trained and experienced soldier. The 
glory of their successes was left for the enjoyment 
of his lieutenants, although he never shrank from 
bearing the blame too often visited upon him for 
their failures.''^ 

Although his inclination was in the direction of 
military affairs, it was to the theory and the practise 
of politics and statesmanship that his life was chiefly 
devoted; and it was as politician and statesman 
that he was most distinguished. He was a close 
student of history and of the science of politics, 
and upon the substructure of definite fundamental 
principles he estabHshed a political conception of 
the American system of a democratic government 
of checks and balances, which combined "the philo- 

1 Walthall, Life, p. 48. 



302 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

sophical spirit of the theorist with the practical apti- 
tude for business of the man of action and execu- 
tion.'^ If his ingrained devotion to State-rights 
may appear extreme to a later generation in the 
subsequent light of historical evolution, his attach- 
ment to the Union of the Constitution, as his school 
of political thought interpreted it, was no less in- 
tense. As long as the Constitution, strictly con- 
strued, continued inviolate in his contemplation, 
he wished for the continuance and preservation of 
the Union. When, according to his view, the sov- 
ereign States, whose compact it embodied, were 
denied the rights to which they were entitled under 
it, by the imposition of oppressive tariffs; by the 
exclusion of the property of one section by another 
from the Territories which were the common domain 
of all the States; and by the interference of one por- 
tion of the country with the domestic institutions 
of the other; and when the respective interests of 
the two sections seemed to him irreconcilable, then 
and only then was he willing to utilize the ultimate 
remedy which he held to be a part of the Constitu- 
tion itself, and to appeal to the solution of seces- 
sion. 

Throughout the period of his public life, he was 
consistent and unwavering in his maintenance of 
the strict-construction. State-rights theory of the 
Federal compact; and the facts of history demon- 
strate that his primary purpose as President of the 



PERSONALITY AND CHARACTER 303 

Confederacy in conducting the war was as little 
to perpetuate davery as was that of Lincoln to 
aboHsh it. 

His ability as an interpreter of the Constitution 
was illustrated, in the Great Controversies, on the 
floor of the Senate; and his talents and capacities 
as an administrator were shown in the measures 
which he devised and executed while secretary of 
war under Pierce. These also showed his con- 
structive statesmanship, which was further con- 
spicuously indicated, while President, by his com- 
pulsory reduction of the currency, by his plan of 
enrolling negroes as soldiers, by his recommenda- 
tions to Congress for the construction and repair 
of railroads for military purposes, and by many 
other initiative measures of wisdom and foresight.^ 
He was far-sighted enough to anticipate the possi- 
ble coming of the ^^irrepressible conflict," and wise 
enough to counsel a change in the economic life 
of the South, when its approach seemed imminent. 
Unlike most of his political associates, he beheved 
that war would ensue from secession, and that it 
would be long and bloody; and, though his con- 
fidence in the ultimate issue, growing out of his 
faith in the necessity of intervention on the part 
of the cotton-manufacturing Powers of Europe, was 
illusive, it was a confidence which was shared for 

^ Short History, pp. 123-5; ''The Confederate Government and 
the Raiboads," Am. Historical Review, July, 1917, pp. 794 ff- 



304 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

a long time by his friends, a«id one whose realiza- 
tion was anticipated and dreaded by his enemies. 

Whether some other man might have more ably 
administered the office of President of the Con- 
federacy must always remain a legitimate subject 
of difference among historians and critics. But 
that the failure of the secession movement was due 
to other than economic causes is now hardly sus- 
ceptible of successful demonstration, though Davis's 
critics have been clamorous. 

He "is probably not equal to the role he is called 
upon to play/' writes the author of A Rebel War 
Clerk^s Diary. "He has not the broad intelligence 
required for the gigantic measures needed in such 
a crisis, nor the health and physique for the labors 
devolving upon him."^ 

Pollard states that "on the 11th of February, 
1865, General Lee wrote deliberately and conscien- 
tiously in one of his general orders : ' Our resources, 
fitly and vigorously employed, are ample,' " and 
argues that it was Davis's maladministration and 
its consequences which caused the fall of the Con- 
federacy, sixty days later.^ But Campbell's report 
to the secretary of war shows the sore distress to 
which the government had come at that time, under 
the strangle-hold of the blockade, the irreparable 
decay and destruction of all transportation facili- 

1 Lee the American, p. 68. 

2 Pollard, Life, p. 446. 



PERSONALITY AND CHARACTER 305 

ties,^ and the loss of hope on the part of many of 
the Southern people. On February 22, 1865, Lee 
himself said in a despatch to Breckinridge: "You 
will see to what straits we are reduced; but I trust 
to work out/' and after the war, he stated: "If my 
opinion is worth anything, you can always say that 
few people could have done better than Mr. Davis. 
I knew of none that could have done as well."^ 

Mosby, the Confederate partisan leader, who 
never came under Davis's influence, and who 
saw Httle, if anything, of him personally, says: " I 
think history will record him as one of the great- 
est men of the time. Every lost cause, you know, 
must have a scapegoat, and Mr. Davis has been 
chosen as such; he must take all the blame with- 
out any of the credit. I do not know any man in 
the Confederate States that could have conducted 
the war with the same success that he did.'' ^ 

As an orator, Davis was occasionally unequal. In 
debate, he was ready, resourceful, and courageous. 
Oliver Dyer, a reporter of the Senate, describes 
him, in 1848, as "a handsome man, with a sym- 
metrical figure, well-up to the medium size, a pierc- 
ing and kindly eye, and a gamy, chivalric bear- 
ing. He had a fine sonorous voice, and was always 
a fluent and sometimes an eloquent speaker. He 



^ "Confederate Government and the Railroads," Am. Hist. Re- 
view, xxii, p. 794. 
2 Lee, Recollections and Letters, p. 287. ^ Memoirs, p. xv. 



306 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

was ready and skillful in debate, animated in style, 
occasionally vehement in manner, but always cour- 
teous,'^^ and Walthall says of him: "He was not 
specially happy as a hohday speaker. He could not 
simulate or create a factitious interest in a sub- 
ject on which he was indifferent. Of a striking and 
impressive presence and a bearing eminently elegant 
and graceful, he yet never resorted to any of the 
artificial accessories of oratory. His style could 
not properly be called winning or persuasive. The 
magnetism that he exercised was derived from 
strong convictions, earnestness of purpose, transpar- 
ent sincerity and truthfulness, force, directness and 
frankness of expression. But the power of his elo- 
quence was never fully developed unless the stim- 
ulus of opposition aroused something of the com- 
bativeness of his nature and called his splendid 
courage into play. Perhaps only they who have 
been witnesses of some of those rare occasions in 
his career when he stood before an angry, excited 
or sullen multitude, strong in the might of an earnest 
conviction of right or truth, united with a lofty 
defiance, which grew firmer and cooler and more 
resolute in proportion to the strength of the an- 
tagonism, — only such can entirely realize hie power 
to move, control, or electrify an audience."^ 
As a writer he does not appear as able as in his 

1 Great Senators, pp. 123, 124. 

2 Walthall, Life, pp. 49, 50. 



PERSONALITY AND CHARACTER 307 

oratorical efforts, though many of his state papers 
won admiration from his contemporaries, and are 
still worthy of study as masterpieces of their kind. 
For the President's messages to Congress Benjamin 
claimed the credit. In a letter written by him to 
Mason from London, February 8, 1871, the former 
secretary of state says: ^^I have the original report 
made by the Commissioners who went to Hampton 
Roads, and a bound copy of the President's Mes- 
sages to Congress, which you (who were in our 
secrets) know to have been written by me, as the 
President was too pressed with other duties to com- 
mand sufficient time for preparing them himself."^ 
Davis disliked the physical effort of writing, and 
in the preparation of the Rise and Fall he availed 
himself of the services of amanuenses. When he 
wrote with his own hand, his style deteriorated 
from that of his dictation, and often became labored 
and discursive. But if the theme was especially 
appealing, and inspired his energy and enthusiasm, 
his method of expression was clear and vigorous. 
Walthall, who lived with him at Beauvoir, and 
assisted him in the preparation of his history, says: 
" One fault which has been criticised as characteristic 
of his speeches and state papers, but more especially 
of the narrative parts of his history, is that of over- 
statement. That strength and positiveness of con- 
viction and intensity of sympathy or antagonism 

^ Butler, Benjamin, p. 396. 



308 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

which marked his temperament led him often to 
magnify the merits of a friend, and sometimes, no 
doubt, the faults of a foe."^ 

From the time of his life at West Point, he had 
been an omnivorous reader of politics, history, and 
governmental science; and he possessed a great 
store of information on matters outside the range 
of these especial subjects. Doctor Craven, in the 
Prison Life, narrates many interesting conversa- 
tions with his patient upon topics of natural science, 
in which he apparently took a great interest; and 
comments on his unusual power of memory, which, 
he said, ^^ appeared almost miraculous, — a single 
perusal of any passage that interested either his 
assent or denial enabling him to repeat it almost 
verbatim, when eulogizing its logic or combating 
what he considered its errors/^ As a curious in- 
stance of the wide range of his information. Doctor 
Craven writes: 

An officer of the day, very fond of dogs, and believing 
himself well-posted in all varieties of that animal, once en- 
tered the prisoner's cell, followed by a bull-terrier, or some 
other breed of belligerent canine. Mr. Davis at once com- 
menced examining and criticising the dog's points with all 
the minuteness of a master, thence gliding into a general 
review of the whole race of pointers, setters and retrievers, 
terriers, bulldogs, german poodles, greyhounds, blood- 
hounds, and so forth; the result of his conversation being 
best given in the words of the dog-fancying officer: "Well, 
1 Walthall, Life, p. 50. 



PERSONALITY AND CHARACTER 309 

I thought I knew something about dogs, but hang me if 
I won't get appointed officer of the day as often as I can, 
and go to school with Jeff Davis." ^ 



Ordinarily reserved and reticent, he could on 
occasion, and with persons whom he admitted to 
his confidence, prove himself both charming and 
instructive in conversation and social intercourse; 
and his considerateness and courtesy prevented 
any difference of opinion from interfering with a 
cordial expression and interchange of views. That 
he should have had a just opinion of his own quali- 
ties was natural; but he was entirely lacking ui 
personal vanity or conceit. He often declared, 
after the war that Albert Sidney Johnston should 
have been President of the Confederate States, in- 
stead of himself, if this might have been possible; 
and that he had entertained this opinion from the 
beginning. '^My own character," he would say, 
in substance, writes Walthall, "was full of sharp 
angles and irregularities, which were continually 
coming in contact with somebody's wishes or feel- 
ings, and repelling or giving offense to people. 
Johnston, on the other hand, with all his great abili- 
ties, had a character so happily rounded, a tem- 
perament so evenly balanced, that he was fitted 
as well for winning and guiding as for governing 
and controlling men, alike in the management of 

1 Craven, Prison Life, pp. 232, 233. 



310 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

civil affairs and in that of the operation of ar- 
mies."^ 

Mr. Bradford, in discussing Davis^s relations 
with Lee, complains that in his writings he tells 
so Httle of himself, and says that '^his own work, 
The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, 
is one of the numerous books that carefully avoid 
telling us what we wish to know. ... Of adminis- 
trative complications and difficulties, of the internal 
working of the Confederate Government, of per- 
sonalities at Richmond, and the Richmond atmos- 
phere, of the inner life and struggles of the man him- 
self, hardly a word."^ This reticence is pecuharly 
characteristic. His own personality was of secondary 
significance to him in the exigencies of the great 
cause which demanded his best energies and abili- 
ties; and in his narration of its history his thought 
was as little on himself as it had been during his 
conduct of the struggle. But that he knew himself, 
his shortcomings, his inabilities, is illustrated in 
what he said of Albert Sidney Johnston. In his 
speech in the Senate in the debate over the situa- 
tion at Charleston, he spoke of having sought to 
curb "an impatient temper" in the discussion of 
what had led up to it. In his "farewell address," 
he offered apology to any senator to whom he might 
have given umbrage by his speeches. The unselfish- 
ness, which Mr. Bradford says made him "thought- 

^ Walthall, Life, p. 52. ^ j^qq the American, p. 48. 



PERSONALITY AND CHARACTER 311 

ful of others, and ready to make sacrifices for them/' 
kept his own personality in the background of any 
narrative of his concerning the events in which he 
figured.^ 

Of his personal attractiveness there are many wit- 
nesses. Carl Schurz wrote of him when secretary 
of war, that he embodied the ideal of a War Min- 
ister. Seward, before the Great Controversies had 
culminated in the ^'irrepressible conflict," said that 
he was "a splendid embodiment of manhood,"^ 
and Charles Francis Adams, the younger, who saw 
him in Washington in the winter of 1860-1, says: 
"Davis, by the way, impressed me that winter 
more agreeably than any Southern man I met. . . . 
To me he was a distinctively attractive as well as 
interesting personality. Of mediimi height and 
spare of figure, he had an essentially Southern face, 
but he was very much of a gentleman in his ad- 
dress — courteous, unpretending, and yet quietly 
dignified. A man in no way aggressive, yet not to 
be trifled with. I instinctively liked him, and re- 
gret extremely that it was not my good fortune, 
then or later, to see more of him."^ 

Much has been written of Davis's differences 
with his generals and those who were his associates 
in the government that is exaggerated and without 
foundation in fact; and the consequences of these 

1 Lee the American, p. 50. ' Memoir, I, p. 580. 

' Autobiography, p. 49. 



312 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

differences have been unduly magnified. His esti- 
mate of Joseph E. Johnston's mihtaiy abilities was 
probably incorrect; but it grew rather out of his 
own aggressive and positive character than from 
any personal hostility. He was a believer in af- 
firmative action, and the Fabian policy of delay 
did not appeal to him. ^'It is worthy of remark/' 
writes Walthall; ^Hhat of the six members of his 
original cabinet, three continued with him to the 
last, and a fourth, Mr. Memminger, so nearly to 
the last that he may virtually be reckoned as one of 
the same class, — withdrawing then only from motives 
of expediency, and not from any lack of friendly 
confidence. Of the six generals who held the highest 
rank in the army, four were in relations of the most 
cordial and confidential character with their Chief, 
until terminated by death in one case, and by the 
close of the war in the others."^ His ability to 
agree with those whose official relations brought 
them in intimate association with him is illustrated 
by his career as a member of Pierce's cabinet, which 
remains the only cabinet in the history of the coun- 
try that continued unchanged from the beginning 
to the end of the administration. 

In his domestic relations, Davis was an affec- 
tionate son and brother, and a devoted husband 
and father. His attachment to his brother Joseph 
and his respect for his judgment and opinion were 

1 Walthall, Life, p. 52. 



PERSONALITY AND CHARACTER 313 

profound. Pollard; whose enmity was not only 
political but personal, charges him with subservience 
to the opinions of his wife, whom he denounces for 
her 'luxurious tastes/' and for her "excessive love 
of display.''^ But Pollard could see little good in 
the President's public or private life, and his charge 
of uxoriousness is only a part of his universal con- 
demnation. Davis's devotion both to his wife and 
children was as just as it was sincere, and Mrs. 
Gorgas relates a touching story of him and his little 
son, whose accidental death has been narrated in 
an earlier chapter: 

We were calling at the Davis house one evening, when 
through the half-open door I saw descending the steps 
a little figure, barefooted and in his night-robe. He came 
into the room, walked up to his father, and kneeling said 
his evening prayer. Mr. Davis laid his hand affectionately 
and reverently on the child's head, and bending his head, 
whispered the prayer along with the child. ^ 

Though always from early childhood indicating 
a deep respect for religion, Davis made no profes- 
sion of it until the period of the war. Both of his 
wives were Episcopahan, and m 1862 he became a 
member of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Rich- 
mond. Reverend Charles Minnegerode, rector of 
the church, gave the following accoimt of this 
event: 

1 Life, p. 360. 

2 Fleming, Religious Life, p. 333. 



314 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

It was soon after his inauguration that he united him- 
self with the Church. Our intercourse had become more 
frequent, and turned more and more on the subject of 
rehgion; and by his wife's advice I went to see him on 
the subject of confessing Christ. He met me more than 
halfway, and expressed his desire to do so, and to unite 
himself with the Church; that he must be a Christian 
he felt in his inmost soul. He spoke very earnestly and 
most humbly of needing the cleansing blood of Jesus and 
the power of the Holy Spirit; but in the consciousness 
of his insufficiency, he felt some doubt whether he had 
the right to come. 

All that was natural and right; but soon it settled this 
question with a man so resolute in doing what he thought 
his duty. I baptized him hypothetically, for he was not 
certain if he had ever been baptized. When the day of 
confirmation came, it was quite in keeping with his reso- 
lute character, that when the Bishop called the candidates 
to the chancel he was the first to rise and, as it were, lead 
the others on, among whom were General Gorgas and 
several other oflScers.^ 

As he was fully aware, during the progress of the 
war, of the hostility and adverse criticism on the 
part of many of his own people, so when it had ended 
he was conscious that some of the Southern leaders 
attributed to him the failure of the Confederacy. 
In regard to this attitude of those who held it, and 
to the demand of many in the North, in the time 
of his imprisonment, that he should be executed, 

^ Minnegerode, Address made in St. Paul's Church, Richmond, 
December 11, 1889, Religious Life, p. 332. 



PERSONALITY AND CHARACTER 315 

he exhibited a patience and courage that were forti- 
fied by his rehgious faith. The apprehension that 
he might escape punishment possessed the minds of 
hostile Northern poHticians of that excited period. 
OHver P. Morton, the governor of Indiana, tele- 
graphed to President Johnson, November 14, 1865: 
''If there is no question of jurisdiction in the way, 
Davis can be indicted and tried in Indiana, as the 
rebel army, 5,000 strong, under the command of 
General Morgan, invaded the State. . . . There can 
be no difficulty in getting a jury that will do justice 
to the Government and to Davis.'' To this John- 
son repHed, on the same day: "Jurisdiction is one 
of the questions which has been much in our way. 
The place of trial must be determined hereafter. 
If the Court and jury find true bills against him, 
it would not interfere with a trial at any other 
place. Bills have been found against him at some 
two or three places in Tennessee, and in this Dis- 
trict." ^ 

Of these evidences of hostility and of eagerness 
for his life, he said: "An unseen hand has sustained 
me, and a peace the world could not give and has 
not been able to destroy, will, I trust, uphold me 
to meet with resignation whatever may befall me. 
... If one is to answer for all, upon him (me) it 
most naturally and properly falls. If I alone could 
bear all the suffering of the country, and re- 

1 0. R. Series II , vol. VIII p. 798. 



316 JEFFERSON DAVIS 

lieve it from further calamity, I trust our heavenly 
Father would give me strength to be a willing 
sacrifice."^ 

During his two years in prison he demonstrated 
a humble Christian character and faith. Doctor 
Craven says that the Bible and prayer-book were 
his usual companions, and a small worn copy of 
The Imitation of Christ, used by him during his 
confinement, testifies in its marginal notes and 
marks to the prisoner's appreciation of certain of 
its most comforting passages.^ 

Perhaps few lives have been more dramatic than 
was his. Marked for hostile attack, both expected 
and unexpected; with ambitions shattered and 
patriotism thwarted; held in prison, untried, and 
under indictment for years; his once ample fortune 
lost, he beheld his young sons die, one after the 
other, and his earthly hopes vanish, and lived to 
survive the friends whom he had known and cher- 
ished in the period of his eminence and power. 

He bore his misfortunes and sorrows with forti- 
tude and resignation, and after his release from 
Fortress Monroe, he was "never bitter or impa- 
tient." The proud spirit that had challenged tre- 
mendous intellectual and physical conflict became 
chastened by adversity, and his spiritual nature 
was strengthened by his experience. "With age 

1 Religious Life, p. 334; Memoir, II, p. 707. 
^Prison lAfe, p. 172; ReligioiLs Life, p. 337. 



PERSONALITY AND CHARACTER 317 

I have gained wisdom and lost hauteur/' he wrote 
to a friend.^ 

After a tempestuous and tragic Hfe, he passed 
in old age, consoled by "a reasonable, religious and 
holy hope," to a serene and quiet end. 

^Religious Life, p. 342. 



AUTHORITIES 

(in the order of their first citation) 

CHAPTER I 

Jefferson Davis: A Memoir, by his wife; two vols.; New 
York, 1890. Genealogy of Jefferson Davis and of Samuel 
Dames, by William H. Whitsitt, A.M., D.D., LL.D.; New 
York and Washington, 1910. Mississippi Valley Historical 
Review, as cited. Records of the Welsh Tract Baptist Meeting, 
Pencader) Hundred, New Castle County, Delaware; in two 
parts; Wilmington, 1904. The Religious Life of Jefferson 
Davis, by Walter L. Fleming, Ph.D.; University Bulletin, 
Louisiana State University, vol. I, N. S., No. 5; Baton 
Rouge, 1910. Jefferson Dams, by William E. Dodd, Ph.D., 
"American Crisis Biographies," Philadelphia, 1907. 

CHAPTER II 

Biographical Congressional Directory, 1774-1911; Wash- 
ington, 1913. Jefferson Davis at West Point, by Walter L. 
Fleming; University Bulletin, Louisiana State University, 
vol. I, N. S., No. 3; Baton Rouge, 1910. Appleton's Cyclo- 
pcedia of American Biography; six vols.; New York, 1888. 
A View of the Constitution of the United States, by William 
Rawle; Philadelphia, 1825. Cotton as a World Power, by 
James A. B. Scherer, Ph.D., LL.D., New York; 1916. Polit- 
ical Debates of Lincoln and Douglas; Cleveland, Ohio, 1894. 
The Lost Principle, or the Sectional Equilibrium, by "Bar- 
barossa" (John Scott); Richmond, Va., 1860. Blackwood's 
Magazine, as cited. Metropolitan Magazine, as cited. Life 
of General Albert Sidney Johnston, by William Preston Johns- 
ton, New York, 1878. Lewis Cass, by Andrew C. McLaugh- 
lin, American Statesmen Series; Boston and New York, 
1899. 

318 



AUTHORITIES 319 



CHAPTER III 

Jefferson Davis's First Marriage, by Walter L. Fleming, 
reprinted from Publications of the Mississippi Historical 
Society, vol. xii. 

CHAPTER IV 

Jefferson Davis, The Negroes and the Negro Problem, by 
Walter L. Fleming, Ph.D.; University Bulletin, Louisiana 
State University, Series VI, No. 4; Baton Rouge, 1908. The 
South in the Building of the Nation; History of the Southern 
States; thirteen vols.; Richmond, Va., 1909-1913 (cited *S. 
B. N.). Jefferson Davis and Repudiation in Mississippi, by 
John Douglass Van Home; 1915. Jefferson Davis, A Sketch 
of the Life and Character of the President of the Confederate 
States, by William T. Walthall; New Orleans, 1908. Southern 
Statesmen of the Old Regime, by William P. Trent; New- 
York, 1897. Life of Jefferson Davis, with a Secret History of 
the Southern Confederacy, by Edward A. Pollard; Philadel- 
phia, 1869. New York World, as cited. Virginia's Attitude 
toward Slavery and Secession, by Beverley B. Munford; New 
York, 1909. The National Calendar and Annals of the United 
States for 1832, by Peter Force; Washington, 1832. History 
of the United States of America, by James Schouler; seven 
vols.; New York, 1894-1913. Niles's Register, as cited. 
Wendell Phillips, the Agitator, by Carlos Martyn; New York, 
1890. 

CHAPTER V 

The William and Mary College Quarterly, edited by Lyon 
G. Tyler, LL.D.; Williamsburg, Va. (cited W. & M. Coll. 
Quart.) 

CHAPTER VII 

The Smithsonian Institution, by William Jones Rhees; 
Washington, 1901. Cyclopaedia of Political Science, edited by 
John J. Lalor; three vols.; New York, 1893. The Works of 



320 AUTHORITIES 

John Caldwell Calhoun; six vols.; New York, 1851-1856. 
The Works of Daniel Webster; six vols., Boston, 1872-1877. 
The United States, an Outline of Political History, 1492-1871, 
by Goldwin Smith; New York and London, 1899. Robert Y. 
Hayne and His Times, by Theodore D. Jervey; New York, 
1909. The Whig Party in the South, by Arthur Charles Cole, 
Ph.D.; Washington, 1913. History of American Politics, 
by Alexander Johnston, LL.D. (3d ed.); New York, 1892. 
Salmon P. Chase, by Albert Bushnell Hart, American States- 
men Series; Boston and New York, 1899. Abraham Lin- 
coln, by John T. Morse, Jr., American Statesmen Series; 
two vols. ; Boston and New York, 1899. 

CHAPTER Vin 

Southern Historical Society Papers; Richmond, Va. (cited 
So. Hist. Soc. Papers). Jefferson Davis's Camel Experiment, 
by Walter L. Fleming, Ph.D.; University Bulletin, Louisiana 
State University, Series VH, no. 1, part 2, Baton Rouge, La., 
1909. 

CHAPTER IX 

William H. Seward, by Thornton Kirkland Lothrop, Amer- 
ican Statesmen Series; Boston and New York, 1899. The 
Lower South in American History, by William Garrott Brown; 
New York and London, 1903. The Political Text-Book or 
Encyclopoedia, by M. W. Cluskey (9th ed.); Philadelphia, 
1860. Great American Lawyers, edited by William Draper 
Lewis; eight vols.; Philadelphia, 1907-1909. Cases on Con- 
stitutional Law, by James Bradley Thayer; two vols.; Cam- 
bridge, 1895. A History of the United States from the Com- 
promise of 1850 (1850-1877), by James Ford Rhodes; seven 
vols.; New York, 1893-1906. The Origin of the Late War, 
by George Lunt; New York, 1866. John Brown, 1800-1859, 
A Biography Fifty Years After, by Oswald Garrison Villard, 
A.M., Litt.D.; Boston and New York, 1911. Recollections 
of Mississippi and Mississippians, by Reuben Davis; Boston 
and New York, 1889. 



AUTHORITIES 321 



CHAPTER X 

A Short History of the Confederate States of America, by 
Jefferson Davis; New York, 1890. Elliott's Debates, as cited. 
Nullification and Secession in the United States, by Edward 
Payson Powell; New York, 1897. John Quincy Adams, by 
John T. Morse, Jr., American Statesmen Series; Boston 
and New York, 1899. Abridgement of Debates in Congress, 
as cited. Benjamin Franklin, by John T. Morse, Jr., Amer- 
ican Statesmen Series; Boston and New York, 1899. Samuel 
Adams, by James K. Hosmer, LL.D., American Statesmen 
Series; Boston and New York, 1899. James Madison, by 
Sidney Howard Gay, American Statesmen Series; Boston 
and New York, 1899. Alexander H. Stephens, in Public and 
Private, by Henry Cleveland; Philadelphia, 1866. Messages 
and Papers of the Presidents, 1789-1897; ten vols.; Washing- 
ton, 1899. Mr. Buchanan's Administration on the Eve of the 
Rebellion (by James Buchanan) ; New York, 1866. Official 
Records of the Rebellion; Washington, D. C. (cited 0. R.). 
Speech of Jefferson Davis, January 10, 1861, upon the Message 
of the President on the Condition of Things in South Carolina; 
Baltimore, 1861. 

CHAPTER XI 

The American Commonwealth, by James Bryce; London, 
1891. Life of Alexander H. Stephens, by Richard Malcolm 
Johnston and William Hand Browne; Philadelphia, 1878. 
History of the United States, by Alexander H. Stephens; Balti- 
more, 1882. Virginia Gazette; Williamsburg, Va.; as cited. 
The Economic Interpretation of History, by E. R. A. Selig- 
man; New York, 1902. American Historical Review, as cited. 
Proceedings of the Peace Convention, by L. E. Chittenden; 
Washington, 1861. John J. Crittenden, by Mrs. Chapman 
Coleman; two vols. ; Philadelphia, 1871. Letters and Times 
of theTylers, by Lyon G. Tyler; three vols.; Richmond, 1884- 
1896. Charles Francis Adams, 1835-1915: An Autobiography ; 



322 AUTHORITIES 

Boston and New York, 1916. Charles Francis Adams, by 
Charles Francis Adams, Jr., American Statesmen Series; Bos- 
ton and New York, 1899. The American Conflict, by Horace 
Greeley; two vols.; Hartford, 1864-1866. The Rise and Fall 
of the Confederate Government, by Jefferson Davis; New York, 
1881. 

CHAPTER XII 

Confederate Portraits, by Gamaliel Bradford; Boston and 
New York, 1914. Judah P. Benjamin, by Pierce Butler, 
American Crisis Biographies; Philadelphia, 1906. Cam- 
paigns of the Army of the Potomac, by William Swinton; New 
York, 1866. The Long Arm of Lee, or the History of the Ar- 
tillery of the Army of Northern Virginia, by Jennings Cropper 
Wise; two vols.; Lynchburg, Va., 1915. Historical Account 
of the Neutrality of Great Britain, during the American Civil 
War, by Montague Bernard; London, 1870. The Life of 
Jefferson Davis, by Frank H. Alfriend; Cincinnati and 
Chicago, 1868. The Blockade and the Cruisers, by James 
Russell Soley, Professor U. S. Navy; New York, 1883. New 
York Times Magazine, as cited. 

CHAPTER Xin 

The Confederate States of America, a financial and industrial 
history of the South during the Civil War, by John C. Schwab ; 
New York, 1901. The Cotton Industry, by M. B. Hammond; 
New York, 1897. The Outlook, as cited. The Public and 
Diplomatic Correspondence of James M. Mason, by Virginia 
Mason; New York and Washington, 1906. New York 
Times, as cited. 

CHAPTER XV 

Reports of Cases decided by Chief Justice Chase in the Circuit 
Court of the United States for the Fourth Circuit, during the 
years 1865 to 1869, Revised and Corrected by the Chief 
Justice; New York, 1876. Stonewall Jackson and the Amer- 



AUTHORITIES 323 

ican Civil War, by Lieut. Col. G. F. R. Henderson; two vols. 
(2d ed.); London, Bombay, and New York, 1899. 



CHAPTER XVI 

Messages and Papers of the Confederacy, compiled by J. B. 
Richardson; two vols.; Nashville, 1906. Virginia and Vir- 
ginians, by Dr. R. A. Brock; two vols.; Richmond and 
Toledo, 1888. Thaddeus Stevens, by Samuel W. McCall, 
American Statesmen Series; Boston and New York, 1899. 

CHAPTER XVII 

Lee's Dispatches: Unpublished Letters of General Robert E. 
Lee, C. S. A., to Jefferson Davis and the War Department 
of the Confederate States of America, 1862-1865, edited by 
Douglas Southall Freeman; New York and London, 1915. 
Lee the American, by Gamaliel Bradford, Jr.; Boston and 
New York, 1912. The Southern Side, or Andersonville Prison, 
Compiled from Official Documents, by E. Randolph Steven- 
son; Baltimore, 1876. Century Magazine, as cited. 

CHAPTER XVIII 

The True History of the Civil War, by Guy Carleton Lee, 
Ph.D. ; Philadelphia and London, 1903. The Hampton Roads 
Conference, by Julian S. Carr; Durham, N. C, 1917. Rich- 
mond Examiner, as cited. Reminiscences and Documents re- 
lating to the Civil War during the Year 1865, by John A. 
Campbell; Baltimore, 1887. 

CHAPTER XIX 

Aris Sonis Focisque: The Harrisons of Skimino [contain- 
ing The Capture of Jefferso7i Davis, by Burton N. Harrison], 
edited by Fairfax Harrison, privately printed, 1911. Virginia 
State Bar Association Reports, vol. XIII; Richmond Va., 1900 
(cited Va. S. B. Asso. Repts.). 



324 AUTHORITIES 



CHAPTER XX 

Prison Life of Jefferson Davis, by Bvt.-Lieut.-Col. John J. 
Craven, M.D. (2d ed.); New York, 1905. The Assassina- 
tion of Abraham Lincoln, and its Expiation, by David Miller 
De Witt; New York, 1909. Report of the Joint Committee 
on Reconstruction at the First Session, Thirty-ninth Congress; 
Washington, 1866. Constitution of the U^iited States, as cited. 

CHAPTER XXI 
Debate on pensioning Jefferson Davis, as cited. 

CHAPTER XXII 

The Letters of Cicero, translated into English by Evelyn S. 
Schuckburgh, M.A.; four vols.; London, 1912. Thomas H. 
Benton, by Theodore Roosevelt, American Statesmen Series, 
New York and Boston, 1899. Senator Benjamin H. Hill of 
Georgia, His Life, Speeches and Writings, Written and Com- 
piled by his son, Benjamin H. Hill, Jr.; Atlanta, 1893. Recol- 
lections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee, by Robert E. 
Lee, Jr.; New York; 1905. Reminiscences of the Civil War, 
by John B. Gordon; New York, 1904. The Memoirs of Col- 
onel John S. Mosby, edited by Charles Wells Russell; 
Boston, 1917. Address made in St. Paul's Church, Richmond, 
December 11, 1889, by Rev. Charles Minnegerode. Great 
Senators of the United States Forty Years Ago, by Oliver 
Dyer; New York, 1889. 



INDEX 



Abolition of slavery, 48, 128 
Abolitionists, 49, 50, 96 
Adams, Charles Francis, 74, 157 
Adams, Charles Francis, Jr., 311 
Adams, J. Q., 70 
Alabama, the, 172/. 
Alabama claims, 181 
"Alabama platform," 92 
Alfriend's"Life," 271 
Allegiance, oath of, 20 
Amnesty, 275, 282 /. 
Ampudia, General, 61 
Anderson, Mayor, 118/,, 133 
Anderson ville, 219, 224 
Andrew, John A., 220 
"Anti-Nebraska men," 94 
Anti-tariflf meetings, 68 
Appomattox, 239 
Army, 86 

Arnold, Benedict, 292 
Arsenals, 183 
Articles of Confederation, 110 

Bache, A. D., 16 
Baldwin, John B., 134/. 
Bayard, Thomas F., 297 
Beach, S. Ferguson, 274 
Beauregard, General, 138, 148, 239, 

273, 296 /. 
"Beau voir," 283/. 
Belligerent rights, 160 
Benjamin, J. P., 143 /., 196, 230, 

239, 249, 273. 286, 297/., 307 
Berard, Claudius, 15 
Beresford-Hope, Mr., 281/. 
Bingham, Governor, 130 
Black Hawk War, 26, 27, 31 
Blair, F. P., 231 /. 
Blair, Governor, 130 
Blockade, 149/., 160, 164/., 168, 

182, 195, 217 
Blockade-running, 153 /. 
Bonham, General, 148 
Booth, John Wilkes, 97, 253 
Border States, 114/., 132 
Boyle, Father, 224 
Brady, James T., 265 
Bragg, General, 206 
Breckinridge and Lane, 104 



325 



Breckinridge, John C, 91, 236, 239, 

249, 273, 294, 298, 305 
Breckinridge, Robert J., 254 
"Briarfleld," 32/., 36/. 
Bright, John, 170 
Brooke, John M., 200 
Brown, John, 94, 96/., 146 
Brown, Joseph E., 208 
Buchanan, James, 91, 119/. 
Buena Vista, 63 /. 
Bull Hun, 160 

BuUoch, Captain J. D., 171, 178/. 
Bureau of Military Justice, 220, 

223/. 
Burr, Aaron, 292 
Burton, General H. S., 267 
Butler, Benjamin F., 105 
Butler, William O.. 73 

Cabin, John Bridge. 85 /. 
Calhoun, John C. 13, 67, 71 /., 77, 

86 
California, 76 
" Camel experiment," 87 /. 
Campbell, Judge J. A., 132, 133, 

235, 304 
Campbell, Lord. 281 
" CarroU HaU," 266 
Cass, Lewis, 73 
Chandler, Mr., 267 
Chandler, Zachariah, 130 
Charleston Convention, 102 
Chase, Solomon P., 131, 264/., 

271/. 
Clay, Clement C, 143, 257, 259 /. 
Clay, Henry, 76 
Cleary, W. C, 248 
Cobb, Howell, 223 
Coercion, 139. 277 
Collamer. Senator. 97 
"Committee of Thirteen," 102, 116 
Comprise Measures, 76, 84 
Congress, Confederate, 200, 210 
Conover's conspiracy, 261 /. 
Conscription Acts, 190/., 235 
Constitution, United States, 69, 86; 

Confederate, 126/. 
Cook, Jane, 6, 8 
Cooper, Samuel, 147, 228, 273, 296 



326 



INDEX 



Cotton, 48/., 68, 113/., 129, 136, 

151 /., 156 /. 
Cotton famine, 157 /. 
Cotton-gin, 68 

Craven, Doctor, 266, 308, 316 
Crimea, 88 
Crittenden Compromise, 106 /., 

116, 130 
Cruisers, Confederate, 176/. 
Currency, Confederate, 189 /., 236 
Gushing, Caleb, 99 

Dafydd, Shion, 2, 3, 51 

Dallas, Minister, 159 

Dana, Charles A., 217 /. 

Dana, R. H, Jr., 274 

Davies, Charles, 13 

Davies, Samuel, 4 

"Davis Bend," 23, 281 

Davis, David, 3 

Davis, Evan, 1, 5 

Davis, George, 239, 267, 298 

Davis, Jeflferson, ancestry, 1 /. ; 
birth, 6/.; early education, 8/.; 
at West Point, 12/.; on State 
sovereignty and nullification, 19, 
27, 65; first marriage, 29/.; life 
at Briarfield, 32 /. ; repudiation in 
Mississippi, 41/.; in House of 
Representatives, 51/.; on Ore- 
gon question, 52, 71 ; on tariff, 54; 
in Mexican War, 58 /. ; and 
General Scott, 59 /. ; debate with 
Andrew Johnson, 55 /. ; Missis- 
sippi rifies, 60 /. ; decUned Polk's 
commission, 65; in United States 
Senate, 66 /. ; and slavery, 23, 
35/., 71; opposes Compromise 
Measiires, 77; campaign for 
governor, 80/.; opposes seces- 
sion, 81 ; secretary of war, 84 /. ; 
increases army, 86; favors Paci- 
fic railroad, 86/.; "Camel ex- 
periment," 87/.; re-elected to 
Senate, 91/.; report on John 
Brown raid, 97 /. ; resolutions of 
1860, 100 /. ; suggested for Presi- 
dency, 105; Crittenden Com- 
promise, 106, 116/.; on "com- 
pact theory," 120; farewell to 
Senate, 121 /. ; commands Mis- 
sissippi troops, 122 ; charged with 
conspiracy, 122 /. ; inauguration, 
first, 14Q/., second, 193/.; at 
Manassas, 148 /. ; letters of 
marque, 149; on blockade-nm- 
ning, 153/.; the "Laird Rams," 
179; economic and military 



legislation, 182/.; reduction of 
legislation, 182/.; reduction of 
the currency, 189 /. ; Habeas 
Corpus, 206; re-elected President, 
193; opposition to, 206, 208; on 
battle of Gettysburg, 211/.; 
relations with Lee, 212 /., 219 /.; 
on exchange of prisoners, 215/.; 
219/., 224; on conduct of the 
war, 216; removes Johnston, 
228; recommends Confederate 
emancipation, 230; Hampton 
Roads Conference, 231/.; de- 
parture from Richmond, 238; 
Johnson's surrender, 239 /. ; on 
Lincoln's assassination, 242; cap- 
ture, 250 /. ; imprisonment, 
259 /. ; trial, 273 /. ; indictments 
dismissed, 276; visits England, 
278; president of insurance com- 
pany, 280 /. ; on secession, 283 ; 
pension debate, 283; personaMty 
and character, 290 /. ; states- 
man and orator, 301 /. ; religious 
attitude, 314; death, 317 

Davis, Jefferson, Jr., 281, 284 

Davis, John, 2 

Davis, Joseph E., 12, 32/., 227, 
280, 312/. 

Davis, Mrs., 159, 220, 244, 248/., 
266 /, 272, 279, 296 

Davis, Samuel, 1, 6, 7, 8, 11 

Davis, William, 4 

Dayton, William L., 92 

Debt, Confederate, 235 

Deerhound, the, 176 

Desertion, 236 

Donelson, A. J., 91 

DooUttle, Senator, 97 

Dorsey, Mrs. Sarah A.; 283 /. 

Dragoons, 2d regiment, 28 

Dred Scott case, 93, 96 /. 

Early, Jubal A., 273 

Economic questions, 46/.; differ- 
ences, 52/.; conditions, 182/. 

Emancipation, Calhoun on, 72 /. ; 
Lincohi and, 198 /., 204 /., 232 /.; 
Confederate, 230 

Emory, William H., 90 

Enhstment, 146 

Enquirer, Richmond, 18, 230 

Erlanger Cotton Loan, 169 /. 

Evarts, William M., 267, 271 

Ewell, Benjamin S., 18, note 1 

Fillmore, MiUard, 74, 91 
Finances, Confederate, 235 



INDEX 



327 



Fitch, G. W.. 97 

Florida, the, 170 /., 177 

Floyd, John B., 89 

Foote, Henry S., 81 

Fort Crawford, 25, 28 /. 

Fort Donelson, 195, 197 

Fort Fisher, 229 

Fort Henry. 195 

Fort Moultrie, 118 

Fort Sumter, 118. 126/., 132/., 

137/. 
Fort Winnebago, 24 
Fortress Monroe, 228 /. 
Fourteenth Amendment, 274 /. 
Fox, Assistant Secretary, 180 
France. 165. 166 /. 
Freedman's Home, 37 
Free Soilers, 74 /. 
Fremont, John C, 92, 197 
Fugitive slave law, 73 

Gamett, Robert S., 90 
Garrison, William Loyd, 69 /. 
Georgia, the, 177 
Gettysburg, 170, 211 /., 215 
Giddings. Joshua R., 49 
Gladstone, W. E., 136 
Gordon, John B.. 273 
Gorgas, General, 184 /., 314 
Gorgas, Mrs., 313 
Grady, Henry W., 292 /. 
Granger, General, 268 
Grant, U. S., 218, 224. 294 
"Great Controversies," 46, 66/. 
Greeley, Horace. Ill, 113, 219/., 

268, 273 
Greensboro, 239 /. 

Halleck, General, 259, 260 
Hamilton, Alexander, 67 
Hamlin, Hannibal, 104 
Hammond, M. B., 158 
Hampton Roads Conference. 231 /., 

2J6/. 
Hampton. Wade, 243 
Hardee. WiUiam J.. 90 
Harper's Ferry. 96 /.. 146 
Harrison, Burton N., 238, 244/., 

248 
Hartford Convention, 110 
Hatteras Inlet. 195 
Hayes. Mrs. J. A., 281 
Hayne, Robert L.. 68 
Henderson's "Stonewall Jackson," 

300 
"Higher Law," 118/. 
Hill. A. P.. 115. 273 
Hill, D. H., 225, 273 



Hollywood cemetery. 288 
Holt. Secretary, 118. 263 
Hood, J. B., 90, 203, 228. 300 
House of Representatives, 45 /. 
Howell, Richard, 51 
Howell, Varina, 51 
Huger, General, 147 
Hunter, R. M. T., 116, 232 
"Hurricane," 31/. 
Huse, Caleb, 145 

Individualism of "Old South,* 

207/. 
Ironclads, 200 /. 

Jackson, C. T., 273 
Jackson, "Stonewall," 115, 205 
Jackson- Van Buren democracy, 52 
Jefferson Barracks, 23 /. 
"Jefferson Davis: a Memoir," 51 
Jefferson, Thomas, 1, 47. 108. 115 
John Brown Raid. 94, 96 
Johnson, Andrew, 55 /., 255 /., 

266, 275, 282 
Johnston, A. S., 21 /., 147, 309 
Johnston, Joseph E., 90, 115, 209, 

228, 239, 241 /, 296, 312 
Johnston, William Preston, 257 
Journals, Confederate, 219/. 

Kansas, 92 

Kansas-Nebraska Bill, 91 
Kearsarge, the, 176 
Kennesaw Mountain. 228 
"Know-Nothings," 91 

"Laird Rams." 179/. 
Lee. Fitzhugh, 90, 115 
Lee, Robert E., 90. 97, 115, 147, 

209, 212/., 226, 236, 269, 273, 

294, 299, 300 
Letcher, John, 273 
Lincoln. Abraham. 104/.. 112/., 

114, 117. 127. 137, 197. 203, 216. 

220, 223 /, 242, 254, 261 /. 
Longstreet, James, 273 
Lookout Mountain, 206 
Lopez expedition, 78 
Lovejoy. Elijah P., 69 
Lowndes. Wilham, 67 
Lubbock, F. R., 257 
Lyons, James, 265, 267, 274 

McCleUan, George B., 90, 197 
Mcllvaine, C. P., 16 
Mackay, Charles, 280 
Madison, James, 108. 110 
Maffitt, Captain, 177 



328 



INDEX 



Mahan, Admiral, 13 
Mahan, D. H., 13 
Mahane, William, 273 
MaUory, S. R., 143, 178/., 239 
Manassas, 148/., 155, 209 
Mangima, Senator, 75 /. 
Mann, A. D., 281, 286 
Manufactures: Hamilton's report, 

67 
"March to the Sea," 229 /. 
Marque and reprisal, 149 
"Mason and Dixon's line," 69 /. 
Mason, James M., 97, 162/., 195, 

272 
Massachusetts, 109 /. 
Maury, M. F., 115 
Maximilian, 231 
Memminger, C. R., 143, 312 
Mercury, Charleston, 212 
Mexico, 70, 300 
Miles, General, 255, 257 /. 
Military supplies, 182 /. 
Missionary Ridge, 212 
Mississippi, 40 /. 

Missouri Compromise, 71, 77, 92, 95 
Monitor, the, 175, 201 
Monterey, 58, 61 
Montgomery, Thornton, 288 
Moore, F. O., 273 
Morgan, General, 315 
Morgan, Willoughby, 29 
Morrill tariff, 129 /., 135 
Morton, O. P., 315 
Mosby, John S., 305 

Napoleon the Third, 180, 279 

Nauticus: "Year Book," 168 

Navy, 156 

Negroes, reUgious training, 38; 
Lincoln on, 198; at Briarfleld, 
36/.; in Confederate service, 
191/.; emancipation, 230 

Neutrality, Queen's Proclamation, 
160 

New England, 67, 100, 109 /. 

Niagara, the, 180 

Northrop, L. B., 147, 189 

Nullification, 27, 48 

O'Conor, Charles, 260 /., 265. 267 /., 

274 
Ordinance of 1787, 48, 71 
Ordnance, Confederate, 184/. 
Oregon question, 46, 52 
Ould, Robert, 265, 267, 274 /. 

Pacific railroad, 86 /. 
Palmerston, Lord, 166 



Paper currency, 155 

Paris, Comte de, 123 

Payne, WilUam H., 273 

"Peace Convention," 130/. 

Pemberton, James, 23, 25, 37 

Penn, WilUam, 2 

"Personal Liberty laws," 77 

Petersbiirg, 226 

Petrel, the. 181 

PhiUips, Wendell. 50 

Pickens, Governor, 138 

Pierce, Franklm, 99, 312 

Pius the Nmth, 9 

Planter's Bank Bonds, 41 /. 

Polk, Jamas K., 58 

Polk, Leonidas, 21 /. 

Polk and Dallas campaign, 45 /. 

PoUard's "Life," 291 

Port Hudson, 205 

Port Royal, 195 

Porter. David D., 88 

Porter, John L., 200 

Pratt, Thomas G., 265 

Prentiss, S. S., 42, 65 

Price, Theodore, 158 

Prices, war, 222 /. 

"Prison Life," 308 

Prisoners, exchange of, 216, 218, 

221 
Pritchard, Colonel, 252 /. 
Produce loans, 188 
Protective tariff, 67 
Provisional Congress, 147 
Pryor. Roger A., 18 

Quakers, 48 

"Queen's Proclamation," 160 
Quincy, Josiah, 109 / . 
Quitman, General, 78/. 

Raih-oads, Confederate, 145 /., 186 
Rankin, Christopher, 12 
Ransom, Robert, 90 
Rations, Confederate, 224 
Rawle, WilUam, 17 /. 
Read, WiUiam B., 265, 267 
Reagan, John H., 239, 245, 257, 

298 
Reconstruction Acts, 277 /. 
Reconstruction Committee, 269 /. 
Redpath, James, 290 
Repudiation in Mississippi, 41 /. 
"Rise and FaU." 211, 273, 310 
Roanoke Island, 195 
Ross, E. C, 13 
Rost, Commissioner, 162 
RusseU, Lord John, 51, 161. 167 
RusseU, WilUam H., 152, 161 /. 



